Corporate and Labor PAC Contributions in House Elections: Measuring the Effects of Majority Party Status

Among other factors, interest groups consider candidates' party label when deciding how to invest their contributions. For many decades, however, the Democratic Party and the majority party were synonymous in the U S. House, thereby prohibiting an empirical distinction between the two. Does majority party status have an effect independent of party on PAC contributions? Controlling for a number of factors, a measure of majority party status outperforms party as a predictor of corporate PAC contributions. All else being equal, candidates whose party is in the majority receive greater corporate contributions than candidates whose party is in the minority. In contrast, labor PACs do not appear to reward candidates for their majority party status.