Replication Data for: Public Campaign Financing, Candidate Socioeconomic Diversity, and Representational Inequality at the US State Level: Evidence from Connecticut

Conventional wisdom holds that public campaign financing can diversify the socioeconomic makeup of candidate pools and therefore of US elected officials, which could make US public policy more responsive to lower SES citizens. I argue that in addition to the absence of a positive relationship between public financing and candidate socioeconomic diversity, public financing, depending on the program design, may in fact reduce candidate socioeconomic diversity. Using occupational data on state legislative candidates in public financing state Connecticut and two paired control states to execute a difference in difference analysis, I demonstrate that when public financing is available, fewer low SES candidates run for state legislative office, and those who do run are not more likely to win and are less likely to utilize public financing.