Obama's small donor base image is a myth, new study reveals

Everybody knows how President-elect Barack Obama's amazing campaign money machine was dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200, a real sign of his broadbased grassroots support.

Except, it turns out, that's not really true.

In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking.

But the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute just issued a detailed study of Obama's donor base and its giving. And that's what the Institute found, to its own surprise.

"The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama's finances," said CFI's executive director Michael Malbin, admitting that his organization also was fooled. "The reality of Obama's fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth."

Adding up the total contributions from the same small individuals (in terms of dollar amounts, not their height), the Institute discovered that rather than the 50+% commonly....

...reported throughout the campaign, only 26% of Obama's contributions through last August and only 24% through Oct. 15 came from people whose total donations added up to less than $200.

The key word there being "total."

It comes down to which definition of "small donor" you accept:

Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period.

Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the $4,600 legal limit for the primary and general elections. In aggregate, that would vault him/her out of the small donor category that was so useful to the political campaign's public relations campaign portraying the donor base as about two times as broad as it really was.

The reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1,000 or more total) than from small donors.

Through the Democratic National Convention, the Institute estimates, Obama received $119 million from genuine small donors, an impressive sum, to be sure.

But not as impressive as the $210 million he'd raised by then from bundlers and large donors.

"After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC)," the CFI study says, "it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated."

Now, we'll see how broad-based news coverage of this real reality is.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: Associated Press

Comments

[Alessandro Machi]

And lets not forget the 200 million in undocumented donations that came in as well, or as I like to say, unmarked bills.

http://www.DailyPUMA.com

[nirad]

Why do you not list the total number of donors and compare that to the numbers for George W Bush? I suspect that you have these numbers and don't want to release them because they don't help the ridiculous and pathetic case you are trying to make.

Keep digging, Andrew, America isn't done burying the Republican party.

[Joe Shea]

I was one of the first to donate to Obama's presidential campaign - on the night he announced - and whether there were lots of big donors later on or not, at the start it was little $25 and $50 guys like me who got him off the ground, and I'm damned proud of it!

Joe Shea
Bradenton, Fla.
formerly of Hollywood

[Joshua Rosenfeld]

Boy, when I read a phrase like "great Republican satan," I know that I am reading an objective analysis of the data. Perhaps a more honest analysis would have reported two more of the CFI's findings:

1) That the result for small donors was a percentage finding, and that the number of total donors (and thus small donors) was much higher for Obama than Bush;

and 2) that Obama had a significantly larger percentage (and number) of donors who fell in the $200-$999 range than did Bush (27 pct. to 13 pct.)

Come on; you write for the LA Times. I expect better.

[normajeanwilkinson]

Considering the mess this country is in right now and that I'm one of the little people, I don;t give a d-m where the money came from if B Obama can pull it all together and give our country back to us.

[BrianW]

Nice try, Andrew. No banana. A five-figure donor is a "large" donor in the minds of most of us. Someone who gave $500 or even $1000 in $100 donations spread over the extended length of the campaign is only a "large" donor in a small mind that is trying to make a case that won't be made. You also miss/skip/ignore another rather crucial aspect-many of us who gave $500-$1000 in $100 or smaller increments had NEVER given to a political campaign before. We're not "professional supporters" OR large supporters. But we made a difference.

[Mature Voter]

Well, your article is not fair. Though I was a Clinton supporter, the fact that you are looking just at percents is misleading. My understanding is that the total number of small donors Far Exceeded any previous total number of small donors to a presidential campaign and Obama raised more money than any other candidate as well. His critics can keep complaining and trying to spin things, but his impressive support from many poorer people and first time donors speaks for itself.

[rob]

meet the new boss -

SAME AS THE OLD BOSS.

[Mark]

I figured it out. "Alessandro Machi" and "Andrew Malcolm" both have A.M. as initials. I don't know which one is real, but either way, you are both losers.

[Why math can be bad.]

Wow impressive! You managed to note that percentage was about the same... would it not be fair to say what the absolutes were? It is in those numbers that you will see an unprecedented AMOUNT of money given in small donations, rather than a percentage of the total given.
You can play with math all day and try and fool people, or you can get business done. Get a real job!

[Edwin L. Jones]

The fact is that Obama raised more money than anybody else. Don't try to maginalize that historic fact. Get over it. Let's talk about the economy stupid.

[kushibo]

If his percentage were the same as George W. Bush's four years earlier, but the amount took in was much higher. That means that the number of "small donors" was also much higher.

Yes, there was a lot more excitement for Obama than for previous candidates. He is a promising individual and I think we will see that America is better off after four years than it is now. And I didn't even vote for the guy!

[Tony S.]

The mythology of the small person contributor is only another example of the obamanites re-framing reality to suit their purposes. And do you people believe that this will end with the campaign? They have too much at stake to not force feed their propoganda for the next 4 years or beyond. This was one reason I would not support him during the primaries or after. I see danger in this person. He is much more like Nixon and bush, than the foolish portrayals of him being like FDR/Lincoln.

[Anne W.]

I consider myself a very small donor, and I contributed more than $199 over the course of the campaign. I donated in $100 increments, and I did have to scrape up the money.

It was the first time I'd donated to any campaign--that's a figure I'd like to see--how many first-time donors did Obama attract?

[Elizabeth Davies]

I had to laugh--it turns out I'm not a "small donor!"

My husband and I scraped together every penny we could, to donate to Obama over a period of eight to ten weeks.

We stopped going to restaurants (e.g., McDonald's). We pledged a no-gifts Christmas for each other (= NO Xmas shopping then or now). We turned our thermostat down to 58 degrees at night, 62 tops in the daytime.

One $50 or $100 gift at a time, we contributed a total of $2000 (two thousand dollars) to Obama.

And now families such as ours are being used to give the entirely wrong impression that we don't count as "small donors!"

[Ted]

Way to go Myth Buster Andrew. Keep the facts coming.

And to Nimrod above perhaps if you read more closely instead of hyperventilating about invisible plots you could see sentences like this from the article, "In fact, Obama's base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush's in 2004 -- Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%."

[therockofages]

Just like a magicians slight of hand, people are focusing on the wrong issues, per usual. The magician gets your attention and focus (over here) while they dupe you (over there). Obama is the current 'elected' magician-in-chief. Good job, voters, by the time you figure out the many 'smoke and mirror' tricks beset on the United States of America, it will probably be too late to fix.

[pitbullstew]

I think the better way to determine the stats is to ak if these were ONE TIME donors or mulitple repeated donations by an individual over an extended period as the article says........ TOTAL.

[Carroll Quigley]

This isn't shocking to anyone who has been following Obama's rhetoric - it's about as centrist as any establishment puppet can get. Brack Obamuel is a Wall Street-funded sock puppet who is filling the administration with a bunch of insiders. Who did Goldman Sachs fund in this race? Who is robbing the American people in broad daylight?

[Larry]

My wife and I gave small amount of money to Obama 15 times and ended up giving almost $2,000. We consider ourselves small donors. The headline and premise of this story is misleading.

[Horse feathers]

For goodwill Americans this is like finding half a worm in an apple you just chewed a bite off. Voters will barf even more when all the other putrid and
cancerous Chicago political ploys and tactics employed come to light.Expect gaffe-prone Biden to give us some juicy clues and hints even prior to
inauguration of the Sorros puppet.

[Jerry Tsai]

Actually, as someone trained in some economic and statistical analysis, I think you failed to persuasively argue your contention.

You claim that Obama's fundraising was NOT "dominated by several million regular folks sending in hard-earned amounts under $200". But then you cite that "the reported numbers show that Obama actually received 80% more money from large donors (those giving $1,000 or more total) than from small donors."

But this is not surprising at all. You are defining a small donor as someone who gives between $0.01 and $999.99 and a large donor as someone who gave between $1,000 and $4,600 (the maximum limit). Then the average small donor might have given $500 (halfway between $0.01 and $999.99) and the average large donor might have given $2,800 (halfway between $1,000 and $4,600). We know these numbers are made up, and we can find out the actual numbers, but we can use these numbers for some quick thinking.

Using these numbers, the large donor average is 5.3 times larger than the small donor average (i.e., $2,800 divided by $500 is 5.3). If, for every small donor there was exactly one large donor, then Obama's contributions would have been 15% from small donors and 85% from large donors. It's simply that large donors give much more than small donors and stating that 80% of his money came from large donors is something that is bound to happen if small and large donors are in equal proportion and even if small donors greatly outnumber large donors, simply because the large donors give so much more money.

It would be far more instructive to look at the DISTRIBUTION of contributions to the Obama and Bush campaigns. What proportion of Obama's donors gave the maximum $4,600 for the primary and general elections (or the maximum $2,300 for just the general election) and is that higher or lower than Bush's? Also, how many people gave money to Obama and how many people gave money to Bush, using ABSOLUTE numbers, not RELATIVE frequencies?

I do not know what these answers are but stating these numbers would be far more instructive as to who received a broader base of support from small donors. It also would be instructive to compare Obama's donor base to McCain's. I suspect that McCain's donor base is extremely skewed, with proportionally less small donors and more large donors than Obama.

The numbers you did cite refute your argument to some extent. You said that through the DNC, "Obama received $119 million from genuine small donors", while he raised "$210 million...from bundlers and large donors." The ratio between $210 and $119 is 1.76, which is far lower than my guesstimate that if there were equal numbers of small and large donors the ratio would be about 5.3. This implies that, during the primary, Obama DID receive considerable support from small donors that was in FAR greater proportion than previous candidates.

We all know it is far easier to cherry-pick a couple of statistics to make an argument than to argue persuasively using numbers. You contend that "Obama's small donor base image is a myth." It may indeed BE a myth, but your argument failed to support that contention and even introduced some numbers that might be used to refute it.

[James Nelson]

I'm not as concerned with how much individuals gave -- I don't see how that affects anything -- I'm more concerned with whether our president now owes favorable treatment to industries or other constituencies, with the tacit threat of reduced fundraising next cycle if he doesn't do what they want. And Obama, by refusing lobbyist dollars and making the bulk of his money through individual online contributions, seems to be the least indebted to special interests of any modern president. Obama doesn't need any special interest group to get fundraising and get elected. And that should be the real goal of any campaign finance reform.

[David from Seattle]

This analysis misses the point.
Tens of thousands of people like myself typically are "small donors", in that we are not wealthy and typically make small contributions to campaigns -- $ 50 here, $ 100 there.
Yet, this campaign was so important, Obama was so impressive, and the primary season was so drawn out that whoosh -- I guess I became a large donor. Blocks of $ 100 and $ 200 donations exceeded $ 2,000. Any analysis of giving has to take into account the phenomenon of middle class "small" donors who were so motivated to exceed this small $ 200 limit under which this study made them into large donors.

[martin]

Huh! I'm a large donor for breaking the 200 dollar ceiling. WHo'd a thunk it?

Smarmy Andrew Malcolm that's who.

Yet another hate piece shilled by the AP. Keep it up.

The fight against conservatism will never end. FIGHT these people. FIGHT them with money, fight them with words, and never let their nonsense go unchallenged. They will destroy America if good people stand silent against the right wing hate machine.