Publications
The Morning Call Op-Ed: How coronavirus upended my college and political worlds
The Morning Call Op-Ed: Why local elections are crucial to our daily lives
Selected Working Paper(s)
Switching to the Winning Horse? Electoral Dynamics and Campaign Donations in the 2020 Democratic Primaries (Capstone Advisor: Professor Seo-young Silvia Kim)
How do individual campaign contributors react when the candidate of their choice is poised to lose? The political fundraising ecosystem has evolved tremendously in recent years, with many more Americans giving to political candidates than before. Despite their importance in campaigns, studies of individual contributors’ decisions remain lacking, especially on how electoral dynamics may affect donor behavior. Using the 2020 Democratic presidential primary as a case study, this paper analyzes how donors’ financial support changes as the election progresses using publicly available FEC data. First, using Sankey diagrams, I visually represent changes in donation patterns for candidates over time. Although the eventual winner was Biden, more than 70% of donations went to others until the second quarter of 2020. Then I test for structural changes in when “switching” to Biden occurs, i.e., a donor who has given to another candidate changes the donation target to Biden. Although it was clear that Biden was to be the primary winner by early March, as well as that party leaders were coordinating to push for Biden’s victory, a significant number of switches only occurred late into the campaign. While a lot of switching activity occurred on primary contest dates, a significant number of switches occurred late into the campaign, such as on August 10, 2020.