# Complex Contagion of Campaign Donations

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.07679 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.07679/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jan 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Link Me Baby One More Time: Social Music Discovery on Spotify](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08818/) (2024)
- [Scalable Amortized Variational Inference for Non-Poisson Buy-'Til-You-Die Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19022/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Money is central in US politics, and most campaign contributions stem from a tiny, wealthy elite. Like other political acts, campaign donations are known to be socially contagious. We study how campaign donations diffuse through a network of more than 50 000 elites and examine how connectivity among previous donors reinforces contagion. We find that the diffusion of donations is driven by independent reinforcement contagion: people are more likely to donate when exposed to donors from different social groups than when they are exposed to equally many donors from the same group. Counter-intuitively, being exposed to one side may increase donations to the other side. Although the effect is weak, simultaneous cross-cutting exposure makes donation somewhat less likely. Finally, the independence of donors in the beginning of a campaign predicts the amount of money that is raised throughout a campaign. We theorize that people infer population-wide estimates from their local observations, with elites assessing the viability of candidates, possibly opposing candidates in response to local support. Our findings suggest that theories of complex contagions need refinement and that political campaigns should target multiple communities.