By Patrick Balles, Ulrich Matter and Alois Stutzer
We examine whether representatives are more likely to serve special interest donors than constituents during times of low media attention to politics. On the basis of 647 roll calls between 2005 and 2018 in the US House of Representatives, we show that representatives are more likely to vote against the preferred position of their constituency, the more special interest money they receive from groups favoring the opposite position. Importantly, the latter effect is significantly larger when less attention is paid to politics due to exogenous newsworthy events like natural disasters and mass shootings. The opportunistic behavior of representatives seems to be mediated, at least in part, by the short-term scheduling of controversial votes into periods with news pressure from distracting shock events.