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The LA Times blog is reporting on a study that states that Obama's small donor base is a myth. It's an interesting read, but in an election year that was unlike any other, it dismisses some key facts.
The basis for the claim comes from the notion that roughly one quarter of all Obama funds came from small donors (a small donor being defined as someone who gives $200 or less). The study points out that, by way of comparison, George W. Bush had the same amount of small donors in 2004.
Yet the study also points out that though an unusually high percentage (49%) of Obama's funds came in discrete contributions of $200 or less, and that only those with cumulative contributions totaling $200 or less for the entire cycle were included in the definition of small donors.
This is intellectually dishonest. Because in defining a small donor this way, it disregards the enthusiasm that people have for Barack Obama, and thus does not factor in the people who could only afford to give a small amount but did so repeatedly. This enthusiasm is the same thing that saw record voter turnout and participation by all demographics around the country in 2008.
A more accurate reading might have been to look at the small donors as defined in the report, but also to look at the number of donors who reached the maxed out limit without giving the total sum at one time.
So it this a legitimate finding or is it simply a press grab by the Campaign Finance Institute? You be the judge.
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SLCScott 74p · 852 weeks ago
The Obama campaign was usually (not always) pretty careful to emphasize that the value of all the small contributions was not the amount of money it brought in, but the number of people that then felt they had a stake in the campaign. And the CFI report confirms that this was by far a record.
By the way, Mr. Super, the CFI report does give some information on the number of small donors who maxed out:
"Finally, not many of Obama's 212,000 small-donor repeaters ended up in the top group. Despite colorful press stories, only about 13,000 crossed the $1,000 threshold in their cumulative contributions. "
The majority ended up in the "middle" range of $201-$999. Over the course of a year and both a primary and general election, I think that doesn't fit most people's notion of fat cat donors.
At some point pretty early on, I did become sufficiently alarmed at a Plouffe email that presented the fundraising facts in a misleading manner that I fired off an email to the campaign. (I don't now recall exactly what the statement was, but I think it compared the fraction OF DONORS who gave under $200 to Obama to the fraction OF MONEY that came from donations of under $200 for past campaigns. That's the same kind of mangling of statistics that Republicans use when they imply that raising taxes on those earning more than $250k per year amounts to raisin the taxes of most taxpayers.) In any case, the next day the misleading statement was removed from their website. I don't think I was the cause of that; I suspect someone inside objected. But at any rate it impressed me with the fundamental honesty of the campaign.
ollie · 852 weeks ago
No I am not rich but I gave a little bit at a time because I was fired up about his campaign.
My guess is that the Obama campaign was talking about people like me and I find it hilarious that anyone would consider me a "big" donor. :)
uplandpoet 69p · 852 weeks ago
Carlos Navarro 1p · 852 weeks ago
Mr Super · 852 weeks ago
KarenAnne 67p · 852 weeks ago
I think you underestimate how badly people wanted to get rid of BushCo, and gave what they could on an ongoing basis, probably nowhere near a total of $2300.
uplandpoet 69p · 852 weeks ago
Dan 36p · 852 weeks ago
According to the Obama campaign, 212,000 small-amount repeat-donors gave enough to cross the $200 threshold, and only 13,000 crossed the $1000 mark. Considering there are 300 million people in this country, is it really so hard to imagine that 13 thousand of them might have had the means to donate $100 or $150 eight or ten times over the last year to 18 months?
If it is hard to imagine, I suggest you get out more - there are lots stranger things going on in this world than people giving a damn about where this country is headed.
Vicki 51p · 852 weeks ago
uplandpoet 69p · 852 weeks ago
Small Donors
We know less about people who stayed at $200 or below because $201 is the trigger for FEC disclosure. Obama's staff says that more than 3 million people contributed to his campaign. We cannot verify this number independently but we consider it to be plausible. Since about $156 million of Obama's funds as of Oct. 15 had come from donors whose contributions had not broken the $200 disclosure threshold (see Table 1), accepting the staff's statement (and subtracting the number of disclosed donors) would mean that an estimated 2.5 million undisclosed donors gave a cumulative average of about $62 each. This figure is consistent with the amount CFI has calculated for the typical undisclosed donor in past elections and is also consistent with survey research. Obama's innovation would not be in the amount he raised from each small donor, but in the number of such people he was able to reach. His 2.5 million small donors would be in the same general range as CFI's published estimate for the number of small donors who gave to all candidates combined in 2004 (anywhere from 2.0 to 2.8 million).