Gender and Small Contributions: Fundraising by the Democratic Freshman Class of 2018 in the 2020 Election: Symposium: The 2020 U.S. Elections.

The 2018 House midterm elections were notable for the number of female candidates who ran and for the extraordinary sums of campaign funds these candidates raised. Both were fueled by the women's marches of 2017 and 2018, the #MeToo movement, and intense opposition to Trump (Adkins and Dulio 2020; Herrnson et al. 2020; Jacobson 2019). In this paper, we explore the intersection of these two phenomena. We show that non-incumbent Democrats, particularly women, running in U.S. House races in 2018 were especially successful raising small donations. Examining preliminary data for the 2019–20 cycle, we then show that the new Democratic freshmen elected in 2018—now incumbents—have sustained their small-dollar fundraising efforts, with women again outpacing men. We conclude by discussing the extent to which heightened reliance on small donations may mark a durable shift in fundraising practices and if so, how such a shift might impact the future politics of the House. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]