Project Director

Deardorff, Michelle D.

Department Examiner

Wintersieck, Amanda L.; Auchter, Jessica G.; Giles, David

Department

Dept. of Political Science, Public Administration and Nonprofit Management

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

In light of the increasing levels of polarization in terms of voting behavior among members of the U.S. House of Representatives over the 112th, 113th, and 114th Congresses, coupled with the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commision 558 U.S. 310 (2010), which authorized the use of unlimited fundraising and expenditure by outside groups in elections, the question was raised whether or not there was a correlation between these two occurrences. Specifically, this paper asks “what role does Super PAC funding play in the roll call vote choices of House Members of the 114th Congress?” To answer this, a chi-square test of independence is conducted between the dependent variable of vote choice and the independent variable of Super PAC funding across several different issue strata. I find that Super PAC funding is correlated strongly to House of Representatives members’ roll call vote choice.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to all my Departmental Honors Committee members for lending me all their knowledge and insight, particularly Dr. Deardorff and Dr. Wintersieck.

Degree

B. S.; An honors thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Bachelor of Science.

Date

12-2016

Subject

United States. -- Congress. -- House -- Voting; United States. -- Congress. -- House -- Rules and practice

Keyword

Politics; Super PAC; Voting

Discipline

Political Science

Document Type

Theses

Extent

42 leaves

DCMI Type

Text

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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