Making Strategic Political Contributions
Zack Cinquini, Tulsi Desai, and Drew Skrainka
Problem Statement
When it comes to politics, people often make decisions for emotional reasons. However, if they want to make an effective change, they need to think strategically. Our goal is to provide a game plan to make the change you want.
When we talked to users, they told us things like “I like Biden because of his bromance with Obama” or “I like Buttigieg because he speaks Farsi just like me.” They also expressed frustration about the fact that nothing ever seems to change.
When we talked to the experts, they told us that people actually could make more of a difference, if they were willing to act a little more strategically — for example, by making donations at certain key times in the election cycle. We aim to communicate this idea through our explainer.
Research Documentation
To understand how people approach politics differently, we talked to a range of people knowledgeable on the topic. One such domain expert, Bruce Fram, founded the Blue Impact Network to help Democratic donors understand where their money can create the most change. Additionally, Adam Bonica, a Political Science professor who researchers money in politics at Stanford, shared with us the importance of donating early in the election cycle, and focusing one’s efforts at the state and local level.
We also spoke to 6 members of our target user group, who helped us understand that political beliefs, motivations, and actions are mediated by a wide range of factors. Despite wholeheartedly wanting political change, however, elements of strategic thinking were notably absent from these factors; people seemed more likely to support and contribute to a campaign based on the guidance of their friends or a personal connection with the candidate rather than thinking empirically about a candidate’s chances and whether or not their support would have more impact elsewhere.
Process Models
In an effort to make sense of such a complex space, we wanted to first narrow down our target audience. We agreed that our approach should be to build something for users who were most open to understanding and potentially taking action on donations in politics (Diagram 1). One of the experts we interviewed, Bruce Fram, specifically encouraged us to avoid the “highly self-confident”/”not knowledgeable about politics” zone, which he deemed the “donor death zone” due to their reluctance to listen to adapt due to deeply entrenched beliefs. Within the target quadrant, we aimed to design an explainer for college students who are politically conscious and have previously donated fiscally to a political organization or campaign.
Next, we spoke to our target users and found that while these people are already donating small sums to political campaigns, their vision of what happens with the money was simplistic, and their perceived impact on the outcome of a political campaign was generally pessimistic.
In our interviews, we found that although some college students felt the need to donate to political campaigns to support their favored political agenda, they weren’t always clear if their small amount of money would in fact do anything. It felt like politicians were always going to get tons of money from “Wall Street” and “Corporations,” the money would get them a win, more money would come in for the next election, and the cycle would continue. Moreover, we found that many donor’s decision on where to give money was influenced by the popularity of the candidate amongst their personal social circle, the candidate’s likeness to the donor (for example, one donor was particularly impressed by a candidate that speaks Farsi just like her), and the candidate’s values as deemed by their social media presence.
In reality, we found that the flow of money is quite complex, not to mention enormously opaque. After doing a bit of digging ourselves, we figured that knowing how to make the most bang for your (donation) buck would be of interest to potential donors.
Politopia
This is the story of how just a little bit of money can make a big change.
The fate of our nation should not just be up to fancy donors and high-paying corporations. It should be up to you.
Play the simulation to see how your support may sway election results:
If you won… great! Do you understand why?
If not… then what happened?
Your small donation can have a bigger impact if it’s donated strategically. Research shows that the best time to donate is actually early on in the primary. Turns out, the jump in funds for candidates right out of the gate can actually play a huge role in deciding who moves forward to the general election. On the flip side, donating during general elections has almost negligible impact, as most people have made up their minds, and ads are less and less effective (Koerth-Baker, 2018).
Try playing again — but this time, experiment with when you spend money. Can you win with money to spare?
Well, we didn’t tell you everything. Even if you donate all your money early, that doesn’t necessarily mean your candidate will win. There are tons of other factors at play. Here are a couple to keep in mind:
- Campaign managers: When deciding where to donate their money, most individual donors focus on the candidate. However, focusing on the person who is behind-the-scenes — the campaign manager — may be more beneficial to knowing how your money will actually be spent.
- Social influences: Not all of the money that is donated is publicly disclosed. Shocking, right? It’s called dark money…
Further Exploration: The Dark, Dark, World of Dark Money
If you could see where your friends were donating, how would your donation change?
What if your donations were shared publicly? How would that impact who you donate to? Why?
What if your donations were hidden?
Sounds like crazy hypothetical questions, but… there are organizations that are allowed to do just that — keep their donations from being disclosed. Their donations are what constitute dark money, “campaign funds raised by 501(c)(4) designated non-profit corporations whose donors are exempt from disclosure.” The motivating factors to donate via this “loophole” as well as the social ramifications of it, are all part of a complex system that impacts people like us, whether we know it or not (Oklobdzija, 2019).
Though this added complexity may make it seem even less “worth it” to put down your hard-earned-money towards a candidate, that’s not necessarily true. There is hope, but the decision on where and when to donate does require a bit more strategy and a bit less emotion.
Summary
We hope this explorable explainer has given you a taste of how you can make an impact in political campaigns, with just a bit of strategic thinking. Whether it’s donating early, learning about campaign managers, or just doing your research, acting strategically can make your voice louder than you think.
Details on our Algorithm
Politopia consists of a population of 250 voters. One at a time, each voter decides which candidate they will support in the upcoming election. A voter decides who to support with a weighted random selection over the candidates, where each candidate is given a weight equal to their existing amount of supporters plus a bonus depending on how much money their campaign is spending.
Opposing candidates spend money at a constant rate. The player, however, can strategically time their donations.
An emergent property of this system is that early donations pay dividends later — since voters’ decisions are weighted by existing support, an early marginal lead often propels a candidate to victory.
Revisions
User testing revealed a few pain points with the first iteration of Politopia (revised version displayed above):
- Players did not feel much of an incentive to try to win with leftover money, often opting to spend the full $100 and failing to notice our subtler takeaways about timing. To combat this, we revised the instructional text after the character selection screen to emphasize this as a goal.
- The “ticker text” during the simulation was distracting to new players. As it was detracting from our main learning objectives, we significantly cut down on the amount of flavor text displayed.
- Once reaching the simulation screen, new users were sometimes confused as to which bar represented their candidate. We added color-coding to the labels to help bridge this gap.
- Users did not immediately understand the functionality of the “reselect a character” and “play again” buttons. To combat this, we changed the icon of the former button to a back arrow, which newcomers found more intuitive.
- Players reported skepticism that their $100 could really sway the outcome of an election. If we had more time, we would have redesigned our characters so that they did not resemble 2020 presidential candidates to resolve this ludonarrative dissonance. For players who are still skeptical that small donations can make a difference, we urge them to read more at Little Money Big Change.
Citations
Briffault, R. (2012). Super PACS. Columbia Public Law Research. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2040941
Bonica, A. (2019, October 9). Personal Interview.
Fram, B. (2019, October 4). Personal Interview.
Koerth-Baker, M. (2018). How Money Affects Elections. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/.
Oklobdzija, S. (2019). Public positions, private giving: Dark money and political donors in the Digital Age. Research & Politics. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168019832475
