Partisan Asymmetries in Earmark Representation

This paper examines how Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives vary in their earmarking behavior. After a 10-year moratorium, Congress enabling members to request small grants for community programs in their districts in the 2021 appropriations process. As part of a reform designed to limit corruption and wasteful spending, members had to submit written justifications for the grants, which provides insight into how members of Congress view their role as representatives. In performing a content analysis on 3007 earmark justifications, we find that Democrats are more likely to name the specific social groups comprising their party coalition in their justifications; Republicans rarely do so. Democrats are also more likely to request grants on their core partisan priorities, while Republicans tend to focus on large local infrastructure projects that are seemingly unrelated to their national priorities. Finally, we find some, but limited, evidence that earmark requests are a result of the different kinds of districts that members represent.

After a 10-year moratorium, members of Congress could once again in 2021 request relatively small grants for individual projects within their districts or states through the earmarking process.As part of procedural reforms designed to bring more transparency to the process, members of Congress had to provide written justifications for how their earmarks would help their local communities.Through these justifications, we analyze both the specific policymaking dynamics of the earmarking process and the variation in how the political parties represent their constituents.
Although representation has long been tied to constituencies (Fenno 1977;Fiorina 1973), Grossman and Hopkins (2016) more recently have discovered that it varies systematically by party.Using a variety of documents such as State of the Union addresses, party platforms, and congressional floor speeches, they find that Democrats tend to adopt a transactional or distributional approach to representation, while Republicans tend to adopt a symbolic approach.This variation, according to Grossman and Hopkins, is caused by the composition of the parties' coalitions.The Democratic coalition is composed of many disconnected social groups (Stanley and Niemi 2006), while the Republican coalition is much more homogenous.Democratic social groups expect elected officials to deliver specific policy goals in return for their support.The Republican Party has fewer groups to service, allowing it to develop a more coherent symbolic message.
In this paper we test the asymmetric politics theory by examining earmark request justifications.First, we imbed the Grossman and Hopkins (2016) into the larger representation literature in developing our argument that party differences can be revealed even in earmarks.Second, we describe how we collected and used members' 3007 earmark requests for FY2022 to identify target populations, policy content, and program type in the justifications.Third, we show strong support for partisan asymmetries in how members of Congress use earmark requests to represent their constituents.Democrats are more likely to specify the program benefits to core constituencies, especially those belonging to their coalition, than are Republicans.Fourth, we discern no coherent issue agenda among Republican earmark requests.In the end, we can only ascertain part of these differences to the districts that the members represent.We conclude by outlining the next steps in this research agenda.

Representational Style and Earmarks
Congressional scholars have long observed that members of Congress choose different representational styles to accomplish their political, policy, electoral, and career goals (Bernhard and Sulkin 2018 1 ; Fenno 1977; Grimmer  2013 1 ; Ramey et al. 2017 1 ).Members may seek to develop a local reputation, represent a specific constituency, or achieve national goals that are not directly related to the specific concerns of their district.They often develop specific "homestyles" that blend their personality to fit their district (Fenno 1977).
As evidenced by their frequent use of photos at ribbon cutting or groundbreaking ceremonies (Stein and Bickers 1997), members can efficiently represent their districts through the earmarking process by claiming credit for funding discrete, tangible, particularized benefits within their districts (Doyle 2011;Frisch 1998;Lazarus 2009;Mayhew 1974;Stratmann 2013).While earmarking may (Lazarus 2009;Lazarus et al. 2012;Stratmann 2013) or may not (Stein and Bickers 1997) help vulnerable members achieve reelection, even electorally safe members engage in it.By placing the authority for targeted federal spending into their hands, members can reveal the communities they prioritize.During the old earmarking regime, members could submit unlimited requests for earmarks, even if they expected only a fixed number to be included into law.The new rules implemented in 2021 limit members to just ten requests, which forced them into trading-off a request that benefits one group or policy priority for a different request for another group or priority (Guenther and Searle 2019).
Because Democrats approach politics as a transaction between a diverse coalition of interest groups and elites, we expect that they attempt to maintain their disparate coalition by satisfying one group at a time through their requests (Grossman and Hopkins 2016).Republicans, on the other hand, who invoke broad symbolism and appeals to ideology in appealing to their core constituents do not have a political strategy that aligns as closely for their earmark justifications.As far as we can tell, the justifications are simply an additional hurdle that members must surmount in securing pork for their district.If the members of the two parties approach representation through earmarks differently, we should expect a significant difference in how members from the two parties target their requests.
Although earmarking has traditionally operated on a universalist norm where the majority party allows the minority party to participate in the process (Mayhew 1974), party leadership have at times used earmarks as a tool, either to help electorally vulnerable members or to persuade members to vote for a bill (Evans 2004).Members of the appropriations committee may receive more earmarks and may judge earmarks more on merit than theories of earmarks and electoral vulnerability often suggest (Clemens et al. 2015).Chairs and ranking members of the appropriations committees-the so-called "cardinals" of Congress-receive more (Berry and Fowler 2016).Although Engstrom and Vanberg (2010) argue that the Democratic majority from 2007 to 2009 punished conservative Republicans by giving them fewer earmarks, Fagan et al. (2023) 1 find that at least during the FY2010 appropriations process, conservative Republicans requested fewer earmarks.Other factors such as gender of the legislator (Schultz 2013), campaign donations (Kaslovsky 2021;Rocca and Gordon 2013) may also impact earmarking.Because of the new rules adopted in the 117th Congress to govern the return of earmarks significantly limit the discretionary power of party and committee leadership, many previous findings may not apply to earmarking today.
If the parties' approaches to representation affect earmarking, we expect Democrats to direct particularized benefits toward specific constituencies.In justifying their earmarks, they explicitly call out social groups that benefit from the program in hopes of claiming credit with the group during subsequent campaigns.Republicans, on the other hand, understand their role as representing a specific vision for America.Earmarking, because of it particularized benefit to a targeted community are not the easiest means by which Republicans can articulate this vision.Subsequently, we expect Republicans to request fewer earmarks.In fact, it was this uneasy relationship between Republicans' ideology and earmarks that caused them to get rid of them in the first place.When they do participate, we expect them to be significantly less likely than Democrats to frame their earmarks as benefitting specific social groups.These dual processes result in our first two hypotheses: Participation Hypothesis: Republicans are less likely than Democrats to participate in earmarking.
Asymmetric Representation Hypothesis: Republicans are less likely than Democrats to justify their earmarks as benefitting specific social groups.
We note that these differences may arise for two different, perhaps overlapping, reasons.First, Democrats may request fundamentally different types of earmarks than Republicans.Second, it could be that the parties request similar types of earmarks, but that their justifications are different.We think an important first step is to show that the difference exists before we speculate about why they exist.
Ideology should make these differences stronger.Because conservative Republicans have even stronger ideological objections to federal government spending, they attacked the practice of earmarking in the mid-2000s as wasteful spending.They eventually forbade earmarks after winning control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections.Because this association likely persisted even during the decade-long moratorium, we expect more conservative Republicans to opt out of the earmarking process, just as they did in the late 2000s.
Conservative Participation Hypothesis: More conservative Republicans are less likely to request earmarks.
Nonetheless, we expect electorally vulnerable Republicans to use all the tools at their disposal to increase their electoral security.As such, we expect vulnerable Republicans to request earmarks.
Competition Hypothesis: Republicans in more competitive districts are more likely to participate in earmarking.
Because Democrats do not hold ideological objections to earmarking, we do not expect a relationship between ideology and earmarking.Nonetheless, we do expect ideology to impact the justifications for their earmark requests.As Democrats become more liberal, they increasingly frame their role as a representative to be a champion for the groups comprising Democratic constituencies.Party entrepreneurs use ideology to bind together the often disconnected social groups that make up a party coalition (Karol 2009(Karol , 2019;;Noel 2014).Liberals see their role as representing not just their constituency, but disadvantaged groups within the Democratic coalition more broadly.When they justify their earmark requests, we expect that they evoke these social groups.
Liberal Targeting Hypothesis: More liberal Democrats are more likely to justify their earmarks as benefitting social groups.
Not only do we expect the parties to differently target groups in their justifications, but we also expect Democrats to request funds for different programs than Republicans; and, we expect that this difference is based on their different issue prioritizations (Egan 2013;Fagan 2019;Green and Jennings 2017).The issue ownership literature finds that parties in government tend to prioritize issues that are core to their party coalitions when making decisions about how to allocate scarce legislative resources and attention (Egan 2013).In the United States, the Democratic Party tends to prioritize redistributive programs and environmental policy, while the Republican Party tends to prioritize foreign policy and crime (Egan 2013).We often refer to these priorities as "owned issues," due to their strong correlation with issues that the public tends to trust each party to handle (Budge 2015;Petrocik 1996;Walgrave et al. 2015).While Democrats can create small grants for redistributive programs based in their local districts, Republicans can sponsor projects focused on law and order, though the nature of earmarks make foreign policy a more difficult issue area.We expect ideology to strengthen this behavior for members of both parties; more liberal Democrats seek funds for projects on Democratic-owned issues while more conservative Republicans seek funds for projects on Republican-owned issues.The differences result in our fourth and fifth hypotheses: Ownership Hypothesis: The parties are more likely to request earmarks on the issue priorities that they own.Ideology Ownership Hypothesis: More ideological members request more earmarks on their party's owned issues.
We next turn to describing the data that we use to test these hypotheses.

The Congressional Earmarks Data
When Democrats announced a new process for members to request earmarks after regaining control of government in the 2020 elections, they rebranded the earmarking process as "Community Project Funding" and implemented new rules for the FY2022 appropriations process to prevent the abuses that put them on the chopping block more than 10 years prior. 1 Members could only make ten requests, they had to submit them online, the earmarks could not benefit a forprofit recipient, members, or their families, and members had to demonstrate community support for the project.The House Appropriations Committee aggregated the requests and justifications and posted them in an online spreadsheet, which we downloaded.It is unclear how the House Appropriations Committee evaluated these justification letters.Research from the 2007-2009 earmarking process suggests that committees evaluated earmarks largely based on merit (Clemens et al. 2015).Because that system did not restrict the maximum number of requests per member, members submitted many more requests than the committee could ever fulfill, requiring it to choose between projects.This process likely changed when earmarks returned.
To measure the representational style of members of Congress, we analyzed not only the request, but also the justification.As an example, Representative Katherine Clark (D-Massachusetts) asked for a $1 million grant to fund an interpreter services program at a community health clinic (see Box 1).She addressed the letter to Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) and Kay Granger (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, specifying both the recipient of the grant and declaring that she had no financial interest in it.The letter included a paragraph describing the project and justifying why it would be an effective use of taxpayer money.Clark described the services that the community health center offers, the local constituencies it benefits, and the reason why it needed additional funding for interpreter services.
We use these descriptions to identify the content of these requests on four different dimensions. 2 The first dimension identified the target populations mentioned as beneficiaries of the grant, using the Grossman and Hopkins ( 2016) codebook (see appendix Table 1).In the Clark example, we classified the justification as targeting both class-based social groups and race and ethnic-based social groups.More than 20% of the earmarks mentioned at least one target population (see Table 1).Poor and working-class families, young people, and specific race or ethnic groups were the most common target populations.
The second dimension identified the program type of the earmark.Most projects involved physical space or objects, such as purchasing equipment for a local fire department, repairing a road, or building a new community center.Members often use images of these physical projects to claim credit for bringing an important project back to their community.Ten percent of projects involved only the creation of something intangible, such as violence intervention programs, workforce training, or mental health counseling.In the Clark example, we coded the earmark as a service because it involved funding an interpreter program at a preexisting hospital rather than building or modifying an existing structure.
The third dimension classified the intended recipient of the grant (Table 2).House rules banned earmarks to forprofit companies, but earmarks were directed toward various types of governmental and non-profit organizations.We classified any earmark that was not directed toward a governmental organization as benefitting a nonprofit organization.In the Clark example, the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center is a non-profit organization.We also recorded if the recipient was a university, K-12 school or faith-based organization.
The fourth dimension identified the policy content of each earmark request using the Policy Agendas Project (Baumgartner et al. 2002).The PAP topic categorization system assigns policy-related outputs to one of twenty major topic areas.We assigned each earmark request to one of twenty major topic areas based upon its title and justification letter. 3In the Clark example, we coded the interpreter program under health care, because it would support the operations of a community health center.
We found considerable variation in the policy topics of earmark requests (see Figure 1).The most common policy topic was health care, which included grants to community health care programs, assistance to people with disabilities, and nursing programs.The entity to receive funding for this project is the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center, Inc., located at 650 Lincoln Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01605.
The funding would be used for Kennedy Community Health's interpreter services program to address the language needs of the underserved communities of MetroWest and Central Massachusetts.As a Federally Qualified Health Center, Kennedy Community Health aims to provide quality, accessible and affordable health care to anyone in need.With a patient population that is predominantly low-income, as well as ethically, linguistically, and culturally diverse, achieving health equity is at the core of their mission.As the area's only provider of refugee health assessments, Kennedy Community Health has become the medical home for individuals who speak over 92 different languages, making the interpreter services program vital to their ability to communicate with their patients and provide high quality care.I certify that I nor my immediate family has any financial interest in this project.Sincerely, Katherine M. Clark Member of Congress April 27, 2021 Notes: Underline added.involved environmental and public lands projects; these projects range from dredging rivers to improving local drinking water systems.Many topics received few or no earmarks, such as immigration, macroeconomics, civil rights, and government operations. 4 We also collected data at the member level.We measured member ideology using the first dimension of their DW-NOMINATE score (Lewis et al. 2019).We measured members' constituency demographics with its share of non-white residents, its poverty rate, and its bluecollar share of the workforce.We measured the members' electoral security by taking the absolute value of the margin of Joe Biden's vote share over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. 5

Partisan Differences in Earmark Justifications
The total number of earmark requests reveals a significant difference by party (see Table 3).About half the Republican conference chose not to request any earmarks for FY2022, while just five Democrats opted out.Given that the Republicans were responsible for banning earmarks after the 2010 election, this result is not surprising.What may be more surprising is that half of Republicans chose to engage in the earmarking process.Democrats, who do not experience the tension between their ideology and earmarking, almost completely participated in the process requested on average 9.8 earmarks per member, close to the maximum of 10 allowed.Only nine Democrats, who many any earmark requests at all, requested fewer than the maximum.Republican members, on the other hand, requested just 7.8 earmarks per member; 56 of 107 members who engaged in earmarking did not reach the maximum number of requests.These results are consistent with our Participation Hypothesis.While they requested fewer earmarks, Republicans requested more expensive ones and their aggregated total was $500 million more ($4.0 billion for Republicans compared to $3.5 billion for Democrats).Republicans requested $37 million in earmarks per member (or $4.7 million per earmark), compared with $16 million for Democrats (or $1.7 million per earmark).What these aggregated data suggest is that while some Republicans opted out, those who did not had no qualms about submitting for rather expensive requests, though not the full number of requests that they were allowed.
Ideology strongly predicted which Republicans opted to participate in the earmarking process (see Table 4).More conservative Republicans were significantly less likely to request at least one earmark (see model 1, p < .001).Members in more competitive districts were more likely to participate when ideology is not controlled for (see model 2, p = .01),but the effect goes away entirely when ideology is included in the model (see model 3).By suggesting that electoral competition only pushed Republicans to engage in the earmarking process by encouraging moderation, we obtain support for the Conservative Participation Hypothesis but not the Competition Hypothesis. 6 We also find differences between each of our coded earmark dimensions.Democrats are more likely than Republicans to justify their earmark requests by specifying social groups within their party coalition (see Table 5).Whereas 12.9% of Democratic earmark justifications target poor or working-class constituencies, only 2.9% of Republican earmark justifications explicitly mention these groups.Furthermore, Democrats are more likely to target earmarks to racial or ethnic groups, young people or children, women, the elderly, and LGBTQ communities.Surprisingly, Democrats are also slightly more likely to mention Republican constituencies, although the difference in means falls just below statistical significance in a twotailed test (p = .067).Consistent with the Asymmetric Representation Hypothesis, Democrats frame their actions as representing social groups, even social groups that are not core members of their coalition, while Republicans do not.The parties also target different program types in their earmark requests.Democrats are nearly five times as likely to request earmarks that provide an intangible service rather than physical construction.They were also more likely to direct grant requests toward schools, universities, and non-profits.Republican earmarks were much more likely to be directed toward local government agencies.These results suggest that the earmarks-not just their justifications-are fundamentally different between the parties.
Next, we find asymmetries in how ideology impacts representational style (see Table 6).An earmark justification letter from a more liberal Democratic representative was significantly more likely to mention any target population (p = .004)or a target population at the core of the Democratic coalition (p = .001).More conservative Republicans are less likely to name both any target population and core social groups in the Republican coalition, but the coefficient is not statistically significant (p = .118for any targets, p = .128for Republican targets).
Finally, we examined the relationship between the target populations named in justification letters and dyadic representation (see Table 7).Democratic earmark requests are more likely to mention racial or ethnic groups as target populations in less white districts (p = .01),while Republicans are not (p = .58).This relationship does not extend to class.Earmark     requests from both parties are not more likely to mention poor or working-class target populations if the district has a higher poverty rate or larger share of blue-collar jobs.Rather, more liberal Democrats tend to mention poor or working-class target populations (p = .03).In fact, earmark requests from districts with a higher blue-collar share of the workforce are less likely to mention poor or working-class target populations, although the coefficient is not statistically significant (p = .11).This result broadly conforms to previous work, which found that liberal Democrats in richer, safer districts tend to prioritize poverty issues more than Democrats in highly impoverished districts (Miler 2018).

Policy Content of Earmark Requests
In examining the differences between the policy content of Republican and Democratic earmark requests, we see a clear asymmetric relationship between the policy topics they emphasize (see Table 8).The Democratic Party is significantly more likely to request earmarks on five of their priorities: housing and community development, education, health care, social welfare and food aid, and labor and job training.These categories comprise the Democratic economic policy agenda in which the government redistributes money toward the party's core constituencies.In contrast, Republicans do not place a heavy emphasis on their core issue priorities, and, again, the issue priorities of their earmark requests do not incapsulate their general election strategy which is based more on symbolism than the delivery of government services.Republicans were not significantly more likely to request earmarks on law enforcement and crime, immigration, or small business policy, and were only slightly more likely to request grants for military bases and veterans.In fact, their most common policy topic was environmental policy at 22%, double the rate of Democrats even though environmental policy has long been a core issue for Democrats.Most of Republican earmark requests on environmental policy though were on local drinking water projects.Republicans two other top categories (transportation and public lands) involved other costly local infrastructure projects such as river dredging, road maintenance, and pipeline repairs.These types of projects may explain the odd divide in the Republican conference over whether to participate in the earmarking process: half of Republicans chose not to participate, while the other half requested more funding (but fewer total grants) than the average Democrat.The demands of a district might explain the divide.Many Republican members represent relatively poor, rural districts, while others might represent wealthier districts that stretch through suburban or urban districts due to gerrymandering.Rural districts may benefit more from the type of medium-scale physical infrastructure projects involving drinking water, river dredging or road building than less rural districts.Democrats, who increasingly represent more compact urban and suburban districts, may see less demand for these types of projects in their districts, where a significant infrastructure project may cost far more than a few million dollars.To test this hypothesis post hoc, we estimated the predictive probability of an earmark being coded as environmental policy, public lands, or transportation and infrastructure using a district's logged population density, controlled for the party of a member's sponsor (see appendix Table 1). 7We found that as density increased, earmarks were less likely to be on these issues.Among Republicans, density is unrelated to earmarks.As with target populations Republicans do not appear to significantly change this aspect of their earmarking behavior in response to population density.
Finally, we test the relationship between issue ownership of policy topics contained in earmark requests and ideology (see Table 9).While a Democratic earmark on a Democratic-owned issue is significantly more likely to be requested by a more liberal representative (p < .001), a Republican earmark is no more or less likely to be requested by a more conservative Republican (p = .787).The ideological ownership hypothesis appears to be asymmetric depending on political party.Liberal Democrats used earmarks to accomplish their core policy goals, while moderate Democrats and Republicans spread them out on other issues, likely related to unique demands of their districts.These ideology results are consistent with the broader story on earmarks.Because they are more consistent with the Democratic philosophy of governing, we see Democrats acting in more systematic ways.The inconsistency of earmarks with Republican philosophy steers Republicans to make less systematic requests that seem to be more district driven than ideological.
The representation differences between the parties extend to the earmarking process.Viewed through the lens of particularized benefits to their constituents, Republicans and Democrats approach their role as representatives differently.The Democratic Party's core issue priorities are derived from a transactional policy relationship between the party and the social groups that comprise its diverse coalition.When justifying their earmark requests, they often specify their coalition partners that the grant would support.When choosing which projects to fund, they focus on the party's core economic policy agenda supporting targeted redistributive policy, even if the projects support intangible services that may make credit claiming more difficult.It appears that liberal Democrats rely upon that strategy even more than their more moderate colleagues.Republicans, in contrast, draw most of their policy priorities from nationalized symbolic issues.If the Republican Party's governing philosophy were more consistent with the process of earmarking, we might see large grants to strengthen local police departments, faithbased organizations, or small businesses.But the delivery of government services to core groups comprising the Republican coalition creates tension with their governing philosophy.As such, some Republican simply choose to opt out of the earmarking process all together.Those Republicans who request earmarks, tend to so for more highly visible local infrastructure projects.

Conclusion
This paper analyzes the earmarking behavior of members of Congress after the practice returned from a decade-long moratorium.We find strong evidence of partisan asymmetries in representation style when earmarking.Democrats use the earmarking process more than Republicans to direct particularized benefits towards the social groups comprising their coalition.Democrats are significantly more likely to name these social groups in their justification.The partisan difference in earmarking is seen in both the core constituencies of the Democratic Party, which Democrats target at three times the rate of Republicans, but also in core Republican constituencies, which Democrats target more than Republicans though not as much as their own core constituencies.We also find that Democratic earmarks tend to be tightly focused on Democratic-owned issues, such as health care and social welfare policy.Republican earmarks, as a result of their inconsistency with the governing philosophy, are less systematically requested, focusing on funding large, expensive local infrastructure projects.Our results show another way in which the partisan asymmetries identified by Grossmann and Hopkins (2016) manifest in the substantive policymaking behavior of members in both parties.
This analysis is only the first step in what we can learn about Congress and how its members represent their constituents through earmark requests.Before the decadelong moratorium, Congress began to release significantly more data on the sponsors and the costs of earmarks, and, for 1 year, even published requests that failed to make it into law.These data facilitated a rich literature on earmarking and distributional spending (Clemens et al. 2015;Engstrom and Vanberg 2010;Lazarus 2009Lazarus , 2010;;Rocca and Gordon 2013;Stratmann 2013).Given that Republicans have agreed to the continuation of the earmarking process-albeit with some significant reformsresearchers should try to replicate these findings.The Furthermore, given that FY2022 earmarking was the first cycle that many members in the 117 th Congress experienced the process, future cycles represent an opportunity to examine how legislators learn about and adapt to use the new process to suit their goals.Finally, researchers could explore how Congress uses the justifications themselves as the process matures, such as revisiting the analysis of subcommittee governance processes (Clemens et al. 2015).
We also believe we can learn about representational styles from these earmark request justification letters beyond party asymmetries.Researchers can explore the relationship between how members justify their behavior and notions of dyadic and descriptive representation.They might also examine how these factors impact the substantive characteristics of the earmarks that members seek.We speculated post hoc that the differences in the cost and policy content of each party's earmarks may be driven by district characteristics, such as how rural or poor the district is.We might also expect variation in earmark behavior based on how compact the district is, with members representing cohesive communities seeking grants for programs specific to that community's needs, while members representing fragmented districts are driven by more national or ideological concerns.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The next most frequent policy area was housing and community development, which included a wider variety of local programs such as building community centers, restoring local parks, and constructing public housing.The next two most frequent categories Box 1. Example justification Dear Chair DeLauro and Ranking Member Granger, I am requesting funding for the Edward M. Kennedy Community Health Center (Kennedy Community Health) Interpreter Services Program in fiscal year 2022 appropriations.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Distribution of earmarks by policy topic.

Table 1 .
Distribution of Targets, Both Parties.Targets are not mutually exclusive.Core Democratic group includes any of class, race or ethnic group, women, LGBTQ, or youth.Core Republican group includes any of religious groups, rural people, military or veterans, farmers, or the elderly.

Table 2 .
Distribution of Earmark Recipient Organizational Types, Both Parties.

Table 3 .
Distribution of Earmark Requests by Party.

Table 4 .
Logistic Regression Estimation of Requesting at Least One Earmark, House Republicans Only.

Table 5 .
Difference of Means Tests, Targets, and Type of Program.
Bold rows indicate p < .05.Core Democratic group includes any of class, race or ethnic group, women, LGBTQ, or youth.Core Republican group includes any of religious groups, rural people, military or veterans, farmers, or the elderly.

Table 7 .
Logistic Regression Estimation of Target Populations Mentioned in House Earmark Justification Letters, Race and Class.

Table 6 .
Logistic Regression estimation of Target populations mentioned in house earmark justification letters.

Table 8 .
Difference of Means Tests, Policy Topic.

Table 9 .
Logistic Regression Estimation of Whether Earmark Requests Are on Owned Issues.late 2000s were a different era in American politics governed by more top-down, centralized earmarking rules.