Small political donors—those giving less than $200 to candidates—have become a dominant force in American campaign finance, but they're intensifying polarization rather than democratizing politics, according to a new book from researchers at the University of Massachusetts and Brandeis University. In the 2020 presidential election, small donations exceeded contributions from large individual donors, political action committees, and even independent expenditures, making them the single largest donor type in that race. Yet the study by Ray La Raja and Zach Albert finds that small donors are "just as advantaged, partisan, and extreme as larger donors, but more impulsive, empowering show horse celebrities and norm breakers over consensus-building lawmakers."
The rise of small donors has been dramatic and concentrated. Small donations remained relatively flat through the early 2000s and 2010s, then spiked tremendously in 2018 and 2020 before declining slightly in 2022 and 2024—though they remain historically high. Since 2016, the top 10 Senate candidates have accumulated about 60% of all small donations, while in the House the top 10 candidates out of more than 1,000 received 30 to 40% of all small donations. This money flows overwhelmingly to high-profile, nationalized races rather than competitive down-ballot contests. Large donors are much more likely to give to in-state candidates, especially for less visible House races, whereas small donors frequently support out-of-state candidates with national media profiles. The concentration means millions of dollars sometimes pour into campaigns opposing "Darth Vader" figures like Mitch McConnell or Marjorie Taylor Greene—money that goes to no-name challengers in uncompetitive races rather than contests that might actually flip control of Congress.
The researchers find that small donors are demographically a "halfway house" between large donors and non-donors—more representative than big givers but still far from ordinary Americans. Women have parity with men among small donors, a sharp contrast to the male-dominated large donor pool. Small donors have somewhat lower incomes, are slightly less educated, and are a bit younger and more racially diverse than large donors. But politically, small and large donors are "nearly indistinguishable from one another" and both groups are "very distinct from voters." They follow news at high rates, engage in multiple political acts beyond voting, hold strong partisan identities and ideologies, and maintain fairly distinct policy preferences. The study notes that "the representativeness of the donor pool decreases in kind of a linear fashion as the donation amount increases"—the smallest donors giving under $25 are most representative, but donors become more distinct as contribution size grows.
The book argues that digital fundraising platforms like ActBlue and WinRed have enabled what the authors call "impulse giving" that rewards outrage and conflict over governing. These platforms "allow campaigns to monetize emotion, instantly"—after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, the Dobbs decision, or Donald Trump's criminal conviction, fear and anger can be turned into money immediately. For small donors, donating is "an expressive act that's tied to their identity" rather than a transactional pursuit of policy influence like some large donors. Members of Congress can "say something provocative in the morning" and be "raising a lot of money in the afternoon." The result: lawmakers who rely heavily on small donors aren't more effective legislators or more bipartisan—instead, they "tend to use more incendiary rhetoric, be more extreme in terms of their issue positions." Members who devoted more time to personally attacking the opposing party attracted more small donations, as did the most vocal supporters of Trump's stolen election claims after 2020. When Representative Joe Wilson shouted "You lied" at President Obama or when Marjorie Taylor Greene yelled "Liar" at President Biden during State of the Union addresses, both reaped financial rewards from small donors for their norm-breaking behavior.
The authors don't advocate for returning to a system dominated by mega-donors and super PACs—they acknowledge that "the wheels are off with the campaign finance system" at both ends. Instead, they recommend reforms that direct small donor money through more accountable institutions like political parties, and matching programs that prioritize the very smallest donors (under $25) giving to local, in-district candidates rather than national figures. La Raja and Albert conclude that reformers who believed small donors would make politics more representative "need to contend with this fact that small and large donors across a range of issues are very similar to one another and seem to be exerting similar forces on the two parties." The book's bottom line: small donors aren't ordinary Americans in miniature, and the populist fundraising revolution has empowered performative politics at the expense of governing.