Obama fundraising: not groundbreaking except in scale

During the campaign, Barack Obama often bragged about how his campaign got funded by small donors rather than the usual big-money activists in both parties.  Indeed, he used that justification for breaking his pledge to adopt public financing for the general election, claiming that his fundraising better represented the modest grassroots.  However, a study by the Campaign Finance Institute says that the percentage of small donors to Obama’s campaign was roughly the same as the 2004 effort by George W. Bush:

It turns out that Barack Obama’s donors may not have been quite as different as we had thought. Throughout the election season, this organization and others have been reporting that Obama received about half of his discrete contributions in amounts of $200 or less. The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) noted in past releases that donations are not the same as donors, since many people give more than once. After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated.

“The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama’s finances,” said CFI’s executive director Michael J. Malbin. “The reality of Obama’s fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth.” …

Although an unusually high percentage (49%) of Obama’s funds came in discrete contributions of $200 or less (see Table 3), only 26% of his money through August 31 (and 24% of his funds through October 15, according to the most recent FEC reports) came from donors whose total contributions aggregated to $200 or less. Obama’s 26% compares to 25% for George W. Bush in 2004, 20% for John Kerry in 2004, 21% for John McCain in 2008, 13% for Hillary Clinton in 2008, and 38% for Howard Dean in 2004.

Well, what’s one more myth among friends?  And let’s not forget that the CFI could only aggregate those donations above $200.  The Obama campaign refused to release donor information for amounts below that threshold (the McCain campaign released the data on all contributions).  Given the rate of repetition among the $201+ donations, it’s not unreasonable to assume that many of the smaller donors gave on more than one occasion as well, and could well have totaled much more on an individual basis than Obama credited.

Obama didn’t win by motivating small donors.  He won by collecting much more from the entire range of donors, and his reliance as a percentage on larger donors differed little from other presidential candidates.  In fact, as Malbin points out, because of the difference in scale, Obama raised far more from larger donors than anyone else in history.

Will the media correct the narrative, now that the election is over and the data is available?  Or will they follow the advice given in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”?

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