Though pundits have been scrambling to find new and inventive ways to describe the extraordinary nature of this year’s midterm elections, in one respect they’re just like the 2014, 2010, and 2006 contests: they’re the most expensive on record. Money has poured, in particular, into Democratic candidates’ coffers, with mediagenic figures like Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke collecting massive amounts from out-of-state donors.

Thomas Ferguson is the leading scholar of money in American politics, having produced study after study on the subject since the 1980s. In books like Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics and Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems, he has traced the way “investors” in political parties have shaped US politics from the American Revolution to the present. In a paper on spending in the 2016 election, for example, Ferguson and his colleagues found that while Hillary Clinton was certainly the biggest beneficiary of capital’s largesse, money pouring into Republican senate races was actually central to Trump’s victory.

Now, in a new paper, Ferguson takes on an even more controversial topic: voter behavior in 2016. Since the election, the liberal press has been quick to dismiss interpretations of Trump’s victory as linked to the stagnating economic fortunes of most Americans. These kinds of explanations, they argue, simply excuse the racism that drove Trump to power. While not dismissing the role of racism in Trump’s election, Ferguson and his colleague’s new work shows the way an economy for the 1 percent paved the way for Trump’s victory.