The impact of political action committee donations on the way members of the House of Representatives vote

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between Political Action Committee donations and the way Members of the House of Representatives vote. To do this analysis, I analyze twelve bills from the past twelve years. In determining what relationship exists between these two, I conduct two different regressions for each bill. With the regression results, I am able to determine how much money will cause the probability of voting to approach 100%. I am also able to show how the party of the Member of Congress affects their likelihood to vote based on different levels of contributions. My analysis demonstrates a clear relationship between contributions and votes by Members of Congress.