Study: Obama's Small Donor Base Image A Myth

Los Angeles Times:

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.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[J-Rome]

Whatever!

[Angelic11]

I don't like seeing Obama compared to Bush in any way

[swift goat pet for truth]

Odd, how "small donor" was defined. $200 is a small number over 20 months.

A more telling number would have been the total number of donors, then the number of donors who gave the max.

[bpress]

The LA story is does not fully reflect the actual study. The small donor base is not a myth, if individual donations are considered. All of the campaigns rely on 'bundlers' and large contributors, but the study showed that contributions to Obama's campaign were 49% of the time given in donations of less that $200. It was fairly easy to exceed the 'small' range they used by being what they called a 'Mid-Range Repeater'. Individual donations of, for example, $50 for 4 months or $25 for 8 months would remove a donor from their 'small' donor definition. More than half of Obama's contributors (51%) donated less than $1000, most of those who went over $200 were by repeated small donations. Obama received more donations overall, which means from all donation levels, and the study shows that 'he received somewhat less proportionally from large donors than did his rivals'.

[pleasethinkcritically]

365

[vgirl1]

This is obviously an ugly attempt by "haters" of average Americans and their support of Obama to try to discredit the accomplishment made by all of us this election. If they can downplay the achievement than they can assert that average Americans did not influence the election as much as we did. In that way they can try to discourage us from doing it again.

It won't work. We know what we did. We are proud of what we did. We did it together, and we broke the influence of the traditional power brokers.

Good job my fellow American citizens. Ignore all meager and not so transparent attempts to downplay our success. The purveyors of this misinformation cannot stand that we brought about change by believing "Yes We Can".

After all, WE DID!

[unite4change]

They just can't get over Obama's win.

[xcrunner77]

Over the 15 months of the primary it would not be hard to give more than $200. Give a single $20 bill per month -- not exactly a large amount, as it's less than the price of a night at the movies for a couple -- and you end up at $300 for the primary. Wow... you're a "large" donor. That was easy.

[AnEarAVoice]

There were multiple Obama-themed fundraisers that I was invited to during the campaign. These groups collected contributions from many small donor participants and contributed one large sum to the Obama campaign - these, in my opinion, are still first time, small donors.

This article appears to perpetuate its own 'myth' of continued hope for the corporate donor lobby class dominating political elections. Say it ain't so, Joe!

[Alaskan4alaska]

Hmmm...Looks like it's time to reconsider which publication gets my advertising dollars. Hate to be contributing to the spreading of nonsense.

[QueenTiye]

The Los Angeles Times report that Obama's small donor base is not really all that impressive. Personally I find their reporting not all that impressive. People who donate $200 are indeed large donors, but I donated (a total - across the primaries and general election) of $263 or somewhere around there. My largest single donation was $30, and that was a splurge.

Further - some of that money (roughly $30 worth) was contributed across 2 or 3 donations to a "bundler" - one Mr. Bob Cesca, who rallied commenters on his blog site (of which I am one) and raised a little better than $10,000. Mr. Cesca is not a "bundler" in the common sense, nor is his "bundling" in any way common. Mr. Cesca was able to use an online tool created by the campaign to bundle donations made directly to the campaign but in his name.

In short - we are still the "little people" - who did tremendous things. the L.A. Times could do some homework and find out what those numbers really mean, because it makes a world of a difference.

Where is Nate Silver to analyze the numbers when we need him!

QT

[fem56]

I am a small donor who donated a little bit at a time but it added up. Got a few cool t-shirts too. Obama got ordinary people to not only donate but to donate in many small increments. The difference is in the details.

[CaptainVideo]

This is pure sophistry. If you donated $250, you are defined as not being a small donor.

Note that to be classified as a large donor you had to contribute $1000 or more.

How much of the money came from people who donated between $201 and $999?

I never thought that the majority of the money came from people who contributed less than $200.

Anybody who is not a large donor should be classified as a small donor. That is, anybody who contributed up to $999 should be classified as a small donor.

[CaptainVideo]

Better yet, people who contributed less than $1000 should be classified as UNLARGE donors.

[LeiftheLucky]

Election over? SCOTUS to examine birth certificate if one is presented
http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2008/11/30/keyes-elaborates-obama-lawsuit/
http://allanerickson.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/presidential-election-not-over/

[Bruupo]

Please get your hopes up for that. You haven't sobbed enough tears to satisfy us yet.

[CaptainVideo]

We won and you lost. Learn to deal with it.

LOSERS!!!!!!!

[Info08]

Nothing will come of it. The last moments of Keyes' failed political career.

[marijam]

He was born to an American mother on American soil in Hawaii. End of case.

[fem56]

What?!!!

[Info08]

HA! Andrew Malcolm doesn't know the election is over!