Volume 1Labels, sorting and partisan feeling

Party identification and ideological labels drew closer together in American surveys. The volume asks what the labels contain, in the United States and about 100 countries, how the alignment changed across birth cohorts, and how it differs from partisans' feelings toward the other party.

Volume 2Coalitions and political differences

Participation, group coalitions, issues and attitudes toward institutions and democracy, 1948 to 2024. Party gaps on these measures differ in size and timing, and some reverse with control of the presidency, so no single trend describes them.

Volume 3Votes, giving and places

Election returns, donor records and county data count different populations at different scales. The volume follows the vote from counties to precincts and down the ballot, compares donors with voters, and returns from places to the people who live in them.

Volume 3: Votes, giving and places

Part VII

Giving

Campaign donors are concentrated in a few hundred college-heavy counties, and their pool sorted before the electorate did.

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The people who give to campaigns are a different population from the people who vote. Donors are a selected group, and donor records describe the people who gave, who are not a sample of all Americans. Chapter 7.1, The ideology of the donor pool establishes who gives and separates a change in who is active from a change in any donor's score, which the scale holds fixed. Chapter 7.2, Counties where donors and voters diverge then compares county donor pools with the electorates of the preceding part. It keeps the limits of timing and location beside that comparison, and it describes places and not the people in them. What share of Americans give, how concentrated the dollars are, how giving varies by occupation, and whether the parties in Congress led or followed the public are on the research agenda.

Chapters

7.1
The ideology of the donor pool
Among reliable individual donors, the share with a CFscore near zero fell from 11.8% in 1980 to 1.2% in 2024, a change in who gives rather than in any donor's score.
DraftIndividualsdime
7.2
Counties where donors and voters diverge
In 570 of 2,839 counties, or 20.1%, the reliable donors of 1980 to 2024 lean opposite to the county's 2020 presidential vote, a count that depends on the definition of divergence.
DraftPlacesdimecounty-returnscounty-demographics

6 further questions for this part are on the research agenda.