Robertson on Marketplace: Be "Profoundly Worried" about Campaign Finance

Marketplace
"The power of superdelegates and campaign contributions"
March 1, 2016

As voters took to the polls for Super Tuesday, the Marketplace radio show interviewed Arizona Law professor and associate dean Christopher Robertson about how superdelegates are influenced by campaign contributions from the presidential candidates they're called to vote on.

From the segment:

“I think we need to be profoundly worried about money and politics in America,” said Christopher Robertson, a professor of law at the University of Arizona who studies campaign finance -- specifically, how contributions affect behavior. He’s found that if people are given money, they feel like they need to reciprocate. He thinks that could be a factor in a close contest at the party convention.

“And if the final tally is a close one, you can imagine a few votes on the margins shifting because of these feelings of reciprocity that are created by money,” Robertson said.

Listen to the segment and read the full text here.

Read Robertson's latest research on campaign finance: "The Appearance and the Reality of Quid Pro Quo Corruption: An Empirical Investigation" (Journal of Legal Analysis)