Legal citations, academic research, good-government groups, and the voting citizenry turn to FollowTheMoney.org for the facts vital to their research. Take a look below at the range of topics that fueled hundreds of varied investigations, listed from most recent.


  • Daniel G. Orenstein, Stanton A. Glantz, University of California, San Francisco
    2019-11-04

    "ABSTRACT: Context: As of November 2018, medical cannabis was legal in 33 US states and recreational cannabis in 10, mostly enacted via ballot initiative. Methods: We identified 32 cannabis legalization initiatives from 2004 to 2016 and obtained campaign contribution and state political and demographic data. After exploratory analyses of 15 potential independent variables, we quantified effects of 4 factors (initiative year, voter turnout, population born before 1946, advocate funding advantage) on voter support and likelihood of passage. Findings: A small number of campaign contributors dominated both sides of the issue, with little involvement by health advocates. Time and turnout, not money, were the factors most associated with electoral outcomes, consistent with increases in public opinion favoring cannabis legalization over time. Year, turnout, and population age were associated with voter support, while year, turnout, and advocate funding advantage were associated with likelihood of passage. When adjusting for an anomalous result, initiative year was the only variable that remained significantly associated with odds of passage, with a 1-year increase in initiative date associated with 2.02 times higher odds of passage ( p < .01). Conclusion: These results underscore the importance of health advocate participation in developing cannabis legalization frameworks."

    "...Data Collection: We used Ballotpedia.org (BP) (Ballotpedia n.d.) (BP) and FollowThe Money.org (National Institute on Money in State Politics 2018) (FTM) to identify 60 cannabis-related ballot measures from 1972–2016."


  • Alexander James (University of Alaska Anchorage), Nathaly M. Rivera (University of Alaska Anchorage)
    2019-11-04

    [Working paper] Abstract: "We develop an analytical framework in which a natural-resource-extracting firm pays an incumbent politician both legal and illegal bribes in exchange for reductions in the severance tax rate. A positive resource shock increases the marginal benefit of a tax cut and more bribes are given. We test this theory using forty years of U.S. state-level data, measuring legal corruption as contributions to political campaigns from the oil and gas sector, and illegal corruption as both convictions of public corruption and "reflections'' of it, measured as the frequency that words like "corrupt'', "fraud'', and "bribery”and their iterations”appear in local newspapers. We find that oil-rich U.S. states are significantly more corrupt than their oil-poor counterparts and that this is especially true during periods of high oil prices, suggesting an underlying causal relationship. Our findings are robust to a variety of modeling assumptions and specifications suggesting that oil”through its effect on political corruption”plays an indirect, critically important, and yet previously overlooked role in shaping public and economic outcomes in the United States."

    "We measure “legal corruption” using campaign contributions received by state and local public officials on behalf of the “Energy & Natural Resources” industry, particularly the Oil & Gas sector. We gather the data form the National Institute on Money in State Politics (NIMSP), through the “Follow the Money” website.NIMSP is a nonprofit organization that maintains a comprehensive and detailed database that lists all contributions received by state politicians, namely state house/assembly members, state senate members, governors and other state executive officials, from 2000 to 2017, along with the corresponding donor industry."


  • The Brennan Center for Justice
    2019-10-14

    "...The levels we recommend for the two qualifying criteria (people and money) in the draft legislation we provided (see Table 2, below) derive primarily from the Campaign Finance Institute’s February 2019 analysis based on state candidates’ fundraising records in 2018.7 That analysis shows a majority of 2018 state candidates would have been able to qualify by September 1 of the election year under our recommended criteria. We urge this Commission to request and consider updated projections by Professor Malbin of CFI as you determine appropriate qualifying thresholds."  Brennan-Center-memo-to-NYPCF-Commission-Oct-14-2020.pdf


  • Dennis W. Johnson, Oxford University Press
    2019-10-01

    "Frequent and fair elections, open to all, are fundamental elements of a democracy. The United States, through its local, state, and national contests, holds more elections, more often, than any other democracy in the world. But in recent years, there have been troubling signs that our system of campaigns and elections has become much more fragile than we had previously thought. More specifically, in the past twenty years, campaigns have changed profoundly: social media and viral messaging compete with traditional media, races once considered local in nature have become nationalized, Supreme Court decisions on campaign finance law now encourage mega-donors, voters are more polarized, party affiliation has waned, and the middle ideological ground has given way to extremist language and voter rage. Twice in sixteen years we have seen winning presidential candidates gaining fewer popular votes than their opponents. The fundamental right of every citizen to vote has been impeded by state legislatures demanding tighter access, more identification, and accusations of voter fraud. And we have faced the real threat of foreign influence in our national elections.

    "This book offers the most up-to-date examination of campaigns and elections, including the challenges and opportunities they present. It addresses fundamental questions about who votes in American elections, how legislative districts are reapportioned and why it matters, the realities of voter fraud, the pros and cons of reforming the Electoral College, the impact of dark money on campaigns, and the role of political consultants and specialists, among other topics. Given the fragility of our election process, what are the threats to a healthy American democracy? Do the candidates with the most money always win? This is not simply a book on how campaigns are run, but why campaigns and elections are integral components of American democracy and how those fundamental elements may be vulnerable to misuse."

    This book cites data provided by the National Institute on Money in Politics and its division, the Campaign Finance Institute.


  • Joonkyu Choi, Veronika Penciakova, Felipe Saffie
    2019-09-23

    Work in Progress - "ABSTRACT: We provide causal evidence on the role of corporate political connections in shap- ing the allocation of government spending in the United States. We exploit a unique identification opportunity provided by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). For state grant allocation, we focus on firms’ campaign finance contri- butions in ex-post close elections for state legislators. For federal contract allocation, we link lobbying activities on ARRA related bills to contracts funded by ARRA and perform matching on firm characteristics. In both cases, we find a sizable impact of stronger political connections at the firm-level on receiving more and larger government expenditures. Firms connected to state politicians are 2.5 times more likely to secure a grant, and firms lobbying on ARRA are 45% more likely to win ARRA contracts. Using federal contracting data, we also find that lobbying is associated with inefficient contract outcomes, including delays in delivery and cost overruns."

    "We use two sources to construct measures of firm level political connections. To measure political connections of firms to state legislators, we use campaign finance contribution data from the National Institute of Money in Politics (NIMP). The NIMP is a nonprofit organization that compiles public records on lobbying and campaign finance at the federal and state level. We use business name and address matching to construct firm-level information about the amount of campaign finance contributions made by firms to state legislators. Because ARRA grants were awarded in 2009 and 2010, we focus on standard elections for state legislative positions with terms lasting until at least 2010. Terms for state legislators vary by state and most of them are either two or four years. In our sample, there are about 5,000 elections in 2006 and 2008, and 500 elections in 2007."


  • Thomas Kruckemeyer
    2019-08-01

    "...The apparent alliance between tobacco interests and Missouri elected officials seems straightforward. Could it be that continued inaction on increasing the cigarette tax and allocating adequate funds to anti-smoking efforts can be traced to the fact that in 2019, 33 of 34 State Senators, the most prominent members of the House Leadership as well as our most prominent statewide elected officials accept campaign contributions from tobacco interests? Before looking at the numbers, a few words about the data are in order.

    "The source of all campaign contribution data is a website called www.followthe money.org."


  • Nandan K. Jha, Neena Banerjee, Stephanie Moller
    2019-07-29

    ABSTRACT - "We investigate the role of teachers’ unions in state policymaking in the context of No Child Left Behind. Our analyses of panel data show that political party control and region moderate the influence of teachers’ unions in the adoption of accountability policies by states. Our analyses of marginal effects show that teachers’ unions are not always against the adoption of stronger accountability policies and neither do they always align with the Democratic Party. Our findings suggest that the current dominant prescription in the policy debate for curtailing the collective bargaining rights of teachers’ unions is not fully substantiated."

    "… According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics (2009), in states such as Oregon, Illinois, Indiana and Nebraska, which are home to some of the strongest teachers' unions, candidates for US state office received …"


  • Simon Weschle, Cambridge University Press
    2019-07-29

    ABSTRACT: "Existing research on the revolving door examines why employers hire former politicians. I complement this demand-side approach by demonstrating the importance of the supply-side. In particular, I argue that one important institutional factor that shapes politicians' willingness to leave office for a private sector job is campaign finance legislation. Less restrictive rules increase campaign spending for incumbents, which makes revolving door employment less attractive. Empirically, I use novel data from the US states and a difference-in-differences design to show that the exogenous removal of campaign finance legislation through Citizens United reduced the probability that incumbents left office to work as lobbyists. The supply-side approach provides insights into comparative differences in the prevalence of the revolving door."

    "...To determine whether they went through the revolving door, I link the legislator data with a list of all registered state lobbyists for the years 2006–2013. Information comes from the official lobbyist registries, published by the respective state disclosure agencies and compiled by the National Institute on Money in State Politics."


  • Ron Fein, Free Speech for People
    2019-07-11

    "The Washington Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the Honest Elections Seattle initiative (I-22), which created the city’s “democracy voucher” program. ...The brief presented an empirical analysis showing that the democracy voucher program helped enhance both political equality and democratic self-government by enabling Seattle candidates, including women and people of color, to run for office without relying on wealthy (often out-of-town) donors. [See generally Michael J. Malbin & Michael Parrott, Small Donor Empowerment Depends on the Details: Comparing Matching Funds in New York and Los Angeles, 15 The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics 219 (2017), http://bit.ly/MalbinParrott; Michael J. Malbin, Peter W. Brusoe, & Brendan Glavin, Small Donors, Big Democracy: New York City’s Matching Funds as a Model for the Nation and States, 11 Elec. Law. J. 3 (2012), http://bit.ly/MalbinBrusoe.]


  • Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson, and Mark Hudson
    2019-07-01

    ABSTRACT "Politics – the collective struggles in which we engage to define, shape, challenge, and reproduce our social reality – is an essential aspect of living a full, flourishing life. This chapter chronicles the ways in which the political life of people living under neoliberalism has been diminished, arguing that the US political system has increasingly incorporated a threadbare neoliberal understanding of democracy at the expense of the democratic equality of citizens. The chapter first looks at the many and various ways in which the business class have worked to firewall politics off from the electoral process. The vote, the chapter argues, has become ever more distant from democratic power, weakened through financing, the power of lobbies, the privatization and fragmentation of media, disenfranchisement, and the redefinition of political subjectivity and the legitimate functions of the state. However, the chapter also moves on to explain the implications of neoliberalism for working-class politics, advancing an account of why neoliberal policies, which seem to harm the working class, resonate strongly with some workers.

    "...They peaked in 2010 at just over $3.5 billion. Add in the state level, and things balloon yet further. In 2016, in the 20 states with data available through the National Institute on Money in State Politics, lobbyists spent another $1.4 billion …"