Honors Program Theses

Award/Availability

Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Kyle Endres

Abstract

This study focuses on the link between knowledge of campaign finance and trust held by Americans in political institutions and members of Congress. The existing literature on the topic suggests that knowing that a congressional candidate has accepted large donations may harm political trust. A self-administered online survey was used to examine the connection between perceptions of congressional campaign funding and political trust. The survey results demonstrate a significant relationship between trust and perceptions about campaign fundraising. Specifically, the more money that the average congressional candidate was believed to have raised is associated with lower levels of trust in Congress. The survey also included an embedded survey experiment that featured a hypothetical candidate running for Congress who either accepted or rejected a contribution of significant value from a super PAC. The results show that those who were randomly assigned the candidate who rejected the contribution rated the candidate more favorably and reported higher levels of trust in the candidate to represent their interests, on average.

Year of Submission

2026

Department

Department of Political Science

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Date Original

2026

Object Description

1 PDF file (20 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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