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

[Tim Welsh]

What this means is that many small donors made their small sacrifices several times over a period of time. That is still different than a few rich people giving the max in a single painless donation. You rich folk must not realize that us poor folk live check to check, and donate similarly. DUH!

[maquisapa]

That's a ridiculous way to count small donors.
I made less than $17,000 in 2003, yet I still found a way to have my donations to Dean add up to more than $200. To insinuate that I was some kind of fat cat big donor because I passed the $200 threshold makes no sense at all. People gave again and again to Obama even if it was difficult for them to do so. It is not the same as the big spenders who plunked down $2,300 in one shot in order to get access at a big event.

P.S. Puma-people: he won, get over it. Hillary is so over it she's going to work for him. It's time for you to do the same.

[Julie]

This is kind of silly. Over the course of a year I probably gave $1200 in increments of $50 to $100. I've never given to a politician--- I'm a public school teacher. I can't afford to. I would definitely consider myself a small donor, but you consider me in the same category as the big bundler. Come to think of it... silly is going a little too easy on you. Of course if you put me in that category then you can compare Obama's numbers to W's. But how many donors like me could W boast? Maybe you should go a little further in your "research," or would that defeat your true purpose?

[Frank]

I'm a small donor. I gave between $25 and $100 a few times. I've never given so much before to a presidential campaign. Yet by the above definition, since the total probably exceeded $200, I'm not considered a small donor? This is just a non-news story getting by on the new bash-Obama bandwagon.

[Math stats]

Expressing stuff as a percent is always tricky. Suppose two people both raise 25% in "small donations." If one raises a total of $400,000 and the other raises a total of $800,000, and each are 25% from small donors, that means that the first one raised $100,000 and the second raised $200,000. In this case, the second one's 'small donors" were twice as many in number as the other. Obama raised more money from small donors than Bush did. That's the bottom line. Expressing it as a percent of a larger amount doesn't change that. That Obama also won over larger donors doesn't change the fact that people came out in droves to support Obama.

[Bo]

I donated $50 five or six times, this makes me a large donor?

[Scot]

A few problems with this analysis (at least as presented). I am not considered a smalll donor even though I had never before contributed to a presidential campaign (I'm in my late 40s). I started with $25, never gave more than $50 at one time) but gave probably close to $600 by the time it was all over. You need to include a comparison of total number of donors, the median total contribution per donor, the number of "bundles" that were done by non-professional bundlers on myobama spaces, etc. Your rhetoric leaps from under $200 to the $4600 limit without any statistical analysis of the inbetween range.

[bob]

is someone who has never donated to any candidate before but gives a hundred bucks out of their middle-class paycheck every other week not a small donor? this adds up quick--if you did this every other week for a year, that's $2600, more than you're even allowed to donate for one election. and yet you're not rich, you can't afford to drop $2300 on a candidate whenever you feel like it, you're not a traditional big donor, you're not attending any glitzy fundraising dinners, nothing from you went through a bundler. you're just a normal person who really beleives in the guy, and every week gives a little something. this is not the traditional donor base; this is not the upper class; this is not corporations and pacs buying the election. this is the essence of an actual, public-supported candidate who people care about. so what's the problem?

[Jesse B.]

What you failed to analyze or mention is how many individuals became big donors.

You see, a lot of people with no special interests gave until it hurt. Many, living paycheck-to-paycheck would give $50 here and there. Eventually, their contributions added up to where they could not donate anonymously anymore.

So, Sally Middleclass from Iowa who gave $800 to Obama is not the same as Joe Specialinterest who gave $2,500 on behalf of his energy company.

Nice try on making this an issue though. The ring wing, who will jump all over this, will probably ignore the fact that percentages mean nothing without the numbers that make up the percentages.

[Rosette2251]

The point that most of you number crunchers miss when reporting this info is that folks like my husband and myself, who never gave a politician a dime in our half-century of life, gave Obama as much as we could spare from our monthly budget, in aggregate over the $200 limit. What you need to publish is the number of never-before donors who were mobilized by this campaign. Shame on you for trying to present a "business as usual" meme.

[mizerello]

I guess I'm one of those so-called "big donors" you describe. Except, Andrew, that I am a middle class woman who had rarely donated to political causes before Obama. I donated on a monthly basis from $150-$250 and by the end of the campaign had given him $4200. I think you underestimate his donor base because I am not a rich, corporate donor. I simply am tired of my country being run into the ground by a party who's only care is to enrich themselves and their friends. I chose to use all the money I would have normally saved each month, and invested it in the U.S.A. And to the PUMA folks--go home and shut up--please!

[tm68]

I was somewhere in between that 199 and 1K. I would consider myself a small donor, as well as a first time donor. I think THAT statistic is what is most impressive. I know there were thousands of people who contributed for the very first time to a political campaign.

[Calder]

What kind of arbitrary designation says that $200 is the benchmark for small donations? I make $40,000/year, and this year I gave the Obama campaign $25 a month, for a total of $300. So am I now a large donor? Am I going to be able to lobby the president the way big oil and the defense industry has lobbied Bush 2 all these years? I don't think so.

[SouthernYankee]

I know one thing. I never contributed to any canidate before Obama. I only gave $10.00. That is all I could afford. They sent me updates and even a thank card. I didn't expect that. I am sure there are a lot of people like me to did the same. It doesn't matter we are happy Obama won. I am not stupid that I think he can solve all the problems. ut anything is better than we got now.

[Barbara Bartschi]

There seem to be a few who are jealous. Giving
monthly adds up, you know -- never did that before. You lost -- get over it.

[F. Horne]

As an Obama contributor, I have a different take than Mr. Malcolm. The reality is not just in dollar totals. In my case, I made 5 separate contributions of $100 each, over three or four campaign months. Each time I made a contribution, I thought "OK, that's it. I'm done."

But then I would get re-fired up--by either inspiration or else anger at the nasty McCain/Palin smear campaign--and make another contribution.

The reality which is captured by the Obama campaign's numbers is this--Obama and his team led by Plouffe were able to sustain and strengthen the commitment of their supporters.

To say that I am just a large suppporter at $500 doesn't capture the dynamics of what was happening. The money represented emotional feedback to the campaign, so that they could gauge what messages were working and how their base was reacting to key events, and to McCain/Palin negative politics.

[Alan Harwood]

Of course large donors contribute a higher percentage of the total money raised. Instead of looking at that figure what you should be computing is the percentage of all donors what gave less than $200. I guarantee you the result will be far more impressive and far different from the comparable figure for the McCain campaign.

[Mr MainStreet]

technically, anyone who gave more than $200 is a large donor?

I gave a total of about $300 in $50 increments over the campaign.

I ALWAYS thought of myself as "small donor" but this type of accounting puts me in the same conceptual league as Exxon.

Fail.

[Tom Shire]

Andrew Malcolm glosses over the simple fact that many of the so-called "large donors" (according to Malcolm) wanted to support Obama in a big way, but could not afford to do so in one fell swoop. Instead, they made multiple small contributions.

To me, that sounds like a committed small donor, as in 'not wealthy,' which would be a better description of the demographic the 'small donor' category is meant to represent.

Basically, Malcolm's article amounts to a bunch of words attempting to mislead people into believing that President-elect Obama was not supported by millions of hard-working Americans who, with great anticipation, look forward to a renewed America under smart and able leadership.

I suppose Malcolm will find a susceptible audience for his words in the conservative blogosphere; and that illustrates one of the biggest problems with Republicans/Conservatives these days: Too frequently, they are willing to believe the silliest tripe.

"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." - Demosthenes

[Jen]

I'm one of those donors who was priced out of the "small donor" category because after several $10 to $20 donations, I think my final total was something like $220. I was unemployed and own a small business that was struggling all summer so I hardly think I can be classified as a "big donor." I think I'm the type of donor they were referring to. This story is a bit misleading.

[1derfulresult]

I agree 100% with nirad - this "spinning" of data to suit your own purposes is why you lost the election.
Why not include the total number of donors? Or better still a simple graph showing the comparison in donor numbers by range of amount?
We know this will not suit your purposes because it will underscore what everyone paying attention knows - the commitment and enthusiasm of the Obama base resulted in ordinary people making many small contributions when they could afford it. It is ridiculous to classify a large donor as someone who contributed $200 or more.

[Peter Wintersteller]

I have no doubt that traditional bundlers raised a good amount of cash for Obama but there were more than a few events in my community like a bake sale that raised over 7K that I would think would have ended up in the bundler category. Also I gave every month for a year at a rate of $50 or $100 so I actually might have crossed the large donor threshold of $1,000 but I still consider myself a small donor. There is a huge divide between the $200 limit for being a small donor and the $4,600 maximum. I gave $100 to Kerry 4 years ago, look at me now. I am that "myth"

[Alonso_Quijano]

By not listing the NUMBERS of donors this article is misleading. It all sounds like anti-Obama spin --

By quoting percentages only and never how the dollar numbers lead to the percentages, the article again misleads. If the small donors gave 26% of the MONEY, then the big donors gave 74% of the MONEY, which gives a smaller percent than 80% more than the small donors. I don't think that giving $225 really qualifies a donor as being a "big" donor.

[Tom0063]

There is no analysis here or comparison of "serial" donors.

What Obama really activated were people like me, who'd never given to a political campaign, who gave 200, then 100, then 300 as this marathon campaign went on.

Are we not truly "small donors"? I'd say with my 60K income I'm much different than the guy who plunks down 2,300 at a dinner.

I gave until it hurt.

How many of those donors did Obama have vs. George Bush?

The key reality is still seems that it was people with modest incomes funded Obama's campaign, and that reality is not at all reflected in this article.

Doing a study based on profession and likely income would be very time-consuming, but also very interesting.

[Kevin]

This analysis is seriously flawed. Many of the contributors did give small amounts but eventually they kept giving and giving until they added up to $200 or more. Besides $200 is NOT a lot of money. Your definition of small nees to be increased.