9320673 Thompson Campaign financing is a prominent issue on the contemporary public agenda. The costs of campaigns are increasing at a rapid pace and reports indicate that political action committees (PACs) are contributing a greater proportion of funds to candidates. Turnover rates are declining and, as a result, the public is concerned about the influence of "special interests" and career politicians in legislative decision making. The primary purpose of this investigation is to collect state legislative campaign finance data from a large and representative sample of states. Data are gathered from approximately 25 states, selected in relation to important differences in their political characteristics (degree of partisan competition for legislative seats, degree of legislative professionalism, etc.), regional and cultural differences, electoral system characteristics, legal requirements (campaign finance restrictions, public funding of elections, etc.), and structural factors (costs of campaigns, size and type of district). Information is collected for approximately 40 potentially important explanatory variables. These include candidate characteristics (party, race, gender, leadership position, etc.); electoral variables (primary and general election votes in current and previous elections, etc.); revenue and expenditure variables; and, system characteristics. Data are collected for the four most recent election cycles - - 1986, 1988, 1990, and 1992. This data set will be the first multi-state, longitudinal (over four election cycles) one available to researchers. The data will be archived at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research where it will be available to other researchers to pursue additional research topics. ***
