Pollster Dan Cox told “What America’s Thinking” on Thursday that more political candidates will likely follow in Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) footsteps by refusing to take PAC money, focusing instead on smaller donations.
“I think you’re seeing candidates too, really embrace this, at least on the left, where there’s Bernie Sanders raising a large number of small-dollar donations, and are refusing PAC money,” Cox, a polling and public opinion research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons.
“I think you’re going to see that increasing,” he added.
Sanders made headlines this week, raising $6 million in the first 24 hours after he announced he was launching a second bid for the presidency, breaking the previous record among 2020 candidates of $1.5 million raised in the first day of a campaign, set by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).
A recent Ipsos Public Affairs survey found that most Americans agreed that there needs to be more transparency on the issue of campaign finance reform.
Sixty-seven percent of Americans said they believed U.S. presidential campaigns should come in a limited time frame, while only 14 percent said they should not.
Seventy-two percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans said the campaigns should take place in a limited time frame.
Eighty-eight percent of Americans said political TV ads should be required to disclose who paid for the ad, while 87 percent said the same about online ads.
— Julia Manchester
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.