https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X18820860 American Politics Research 1–19 © The Author(s) 2018 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1532673X18820860 journals.sagepub.com/home/apr Research Article To Know It Is to Loath It: Perceptions of Campaign Finance and Attitudes About Congress Todd Donovan 1 and Shaun Bowler 2 Abstract We model attitudes about Congress as structured by perceptions of campaign finance. Attitudes about unlimited corporate and union spending are modeled as structured by knowledge about Congress. We find people with more factual knowledge of Congress were more likely to view unlimited independent corporate and union spending as having improper influence. We also found that people made some distinctions about sources of campaign finance. Knowledgeable people viewed unlimited independent expenditures as improper influence, but were less likely to perceive direct contributions from individuals to candidates as corrupt. When attitudes about Congress are estimated as a function of perceptions about financier influence, we find that perceptions about unlimited independent spending predicted negative views of representation and Congress, whereas perceptions of limited individual donations did not. People who knew the most about Congress were substantially more likely to find unlimited independent spending—the sort allowed by Citizens United—to be troubling. Keywords Congress, campaign finance, public opinion, corruption 1 Western Washington University, Bellingham, USA 2 University of California, Riverside, USA Corresponding Author: Todd Donovan, Western Washington University, MS 9082, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA. Email: Todd.Donovan@wwu.edu 820860APR XX X 10.1177/1532673X18820860American Politics ResearchDonovan and Bowler research-article 2018