Donate to Party or Candidate

Question Language

1952,1956,1960,1962: Did you give any money or buy any tickets or anything to help the campaign for one of the parties or candidates?

1964: Did you give any money or buy any tickets or anything to help a party or candidate pay campaign expenses this year?

1966,1968: During this last year were you or any member of your household asked to give money or buy tickets to help pay the campaign expenses of a political party or candidate? (IF YES) Did you give any money or buy any tickets?

1972,1974: Did you give any money to a political party this year?

1976: Did you give any money to a political party or make any other contribution this year? (responses : 1. yes, 5. no, 7. tax check-off).

1978: Did you give any money to a political party or candidate this year?

1980,1982: Now a few questions about giving money during this last election campaign: What about other political contributions [other than tax check-offs]. Did you give any money this year to a candidate running for public office?; Apart from contributions from specific candidates, how about contributions to any of the political parties. Did you give money to a political party during this election year?

1984: As you know, during an election year people are often asked to make a contribution to support campaigns. During the past year, did you give any money to an individual candidate, to a political party organization, people supporting a ballot proposition, or to a particular issue or interest group? (IF YES: Apart from contributions from specific candidates, how about contributions to any political party organization. Did you give money to a political party during this election year? Now, apart from contributions to a political party, did you give any money to an individual candidate running for public office?)

1986: As you know, during an election year people are often asked to make a contribution to support campaigns. During the past year, did you give any money to an individual candidate, or to a political party organization?

1988 AND LATER: During an election year people are often asked to make a contribution to support campaigns. Did you give money to a political party during this election year? Did you give money to an individual candidate running for public office?

All

By Education

By Gender

By Income

By Race

Note: Options for race have varied significantly overtime, and the size of the ANES means that there are very small samples Asian and American Indian. Because of this they are grouped together into “Other, non-Hispanic” which also includes those who identify as multiple racial categories. I also drop any years where there are fewer than 50 individuals in the sample. This is far from ideal.

By Subjective Class

Subjective class is what an individual identifies as when asked. The question used by ANES is:

There’s been some talk these days about different social classes. Most people say they belong either to the middle class or the working class. Do you ever think of yourself as belonging in one of these classes? Which one?

In some years respondents were asked where they identified within “working” or “middle” but not consistently so that has been dropped from this analysis.

By Party

Note: This includes “leaners” in the party they lean towards. Individuals were first asked whether they think of themselves as a Republican, Democrat or Independent. Those who identify as Independent are then asked if they lean towards one party or the other.

By Union Status

Data

The summary statistics are available here. The Group N column is the number of respondents in a given group in a given year while the N column is the number of respondents who selected the answer in the Donated column.

Note: These are all weighted statistics (using the VCF0009z weights) and are provided if you’d like to make you own visualizations. If you are interested in doing your own analysis, use the raw data available from the American National Election Studies survey.