A New Landscape: Gender and Campaign Finance in U.S. Elections | Olivia Bergen

Research on Congressional races of the 1980s and 1990s has indicated that men and women raise equal campaign funds and that a gender gap in the value of those funds has been closing since the ’90s. Significant changes have taken place in the campaign finance landscape since 2000, however, with campaign finance regulations loosening and spending reaching higher levels each election. This paper updates the literature with analysis of House and Senate races from 1980 to 2012,
inclusive, determining that since 2000, women candidates for the Senate have not only reached parity, but also have also raised and spent greater funds on average than men candidates. For House races, over time finance variables have become weaker predictors of electoral success for women.

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