000			01740nam a22001577a 4500
999			_c519400 _d519400
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100			_aBoudreau, Chery and Mackenzie, Scott A. _932329
245			_aTRENDS: Following the money: How donor information affects public opinion about initiatives
260			_aPolitical Research Quarterly
300			_a74(3), Sep, 2021: p.511-525
520			_aCitizens are typically uninformed about politics and know little about issues at stake in direct democracy elections. Government efforts to inform electorates include requiring donors to initiative campaigns to report their activities and then circulating such donor information to citizens. What effects does donor information have on citizens’ opinions? We conduct a survey experiment where respondents express opinions about initiatives in a real-world election. We manipulate whether they receive donor information, party cues, policy information from a nonpartisan expert, or no additional information. We find that donor information influences citizens’ opinions in the aggregate, with effects comparable to those of party cues and policy information. However, donor information has negligible effects on uninformed citizens, who have difficulty inferring donors’ policy interests and connecting them to their own. These results underscore the potential benefits of efforts to inform electorates via disclosure laws and highlight disparities in their effectiveness for informed and uninformed citizens. – Reproduced
650			_aDonors, Party cues, Political knowledge, Campaign finance disclosure, Policy information, Direct democracy _930370
773			_aPolitical Research Quarterly
906			_aELECTIONS
942			_cAR