Study's Claim on the 'Myth' of Obama's Small Donor Base Is Itself a 'Myth'

The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) study disclosing that Barack Obama actually raised most of his campaign money from "larger" not "small" donors has gained wide, approving, coverage in recent days, from USA Today to the New York Times and Los Angeles Times and countless web sites, even making Huffington Post at least twice, including as a top link. Inevitably the headlines refer to the "myth" of Obama riding a wave of small donations to victory. That study's author himself uses it.

But the "myth" is actually in the spinning of the report, including by its author, Michael Malbin, a former speechwriter for Dick Cheney, when he was Pentagon chief, and a resident fellow at The American Enterprise Institute from 1977 to 1986.

As usual in these cases, it's not that the numbers are wrong, it's the analysis and how the interpretation is being played by the media. Because, buried in the report, are all the figures and arguments for showing that the CFI's "myth" is actually a myth.

Let us count the ways. There are many more that I could (and perhaps will, time permitting) add. I will also be quite willing to correct any of the numbers or my own analysis:

1. Did many in the media actually allege that most of Obama's total funding was coming from small donors -- or just that he was being helped along significantly by them and that the number of new and smaller donors was unprecedented? All of that, in fact, is true, based on the study. In fact, even accepting the CFI's tight definition of "small," these people donated more than half of what McCain was able to raise in total.

2. More importantly, what is a "small donor"? The report suggests that giving more than $200, in aggregate, takes you out of the "small" level. Between $200 and $1000 represents "mid-range" with over $1000 "large." There are two problems with this.

Why would $199 be small but, say, $299 not? It's an awfully arbitrary breakdown. Second, what is really "small"? With fat cats bundling millions, and many able to give up to $4600 individually, why not define "small" as, say, under $500 or under $800? This would change the numbers dramatically.

For example, much has been made of the percentage of "small money" (under $200) for Obama being only one point higher than that for Bush in 2004 (26% vs. 25%). But if you consider "small" a figure of $999 or less (in aggregate, often made up of repeated small donations), the Obama figure comes to 53%, while Bush stops at 38% and McCain at 41% -- quite a difference.

3. Many people started by giving less than $200 but then kept giving more, putting them in the mid- or high-level categories. It's valid to combine them, except that the study insists on comparing Obama's race and fundraising with past campaigns. And there's no comparison. None of the candidates in the past two cycles campaigned for almost two years, and were engaged in brutal primary fight that ended little more than two months before the party's convention. Kerry, Bush, and McCain all had relatively brief (or no) primary battles. So the Obama fundraising went on much, much, longer, by necessity.

Yet by CFI's definition, if you gave Obama $100 in 2007, then $100 when he kept battling Clinton in the spring of 2008, and then another $100 in September 2008, you were not a "small" donor.

4. Even putting aside all this, the report relates, deep within, that Obama, in fact, received donations under $200 from a staggering 2.5 million people -- completely unprecedented. A closer look at the actual figures show that Obama got over $115 million from these donors -- while the other three got only in the range of $40 to $50 million. The study also notes that Obama's 2.5 million donors equaled the combined number of such donors for all candidates in 2004. Yet the media is now being accused of pushing the "myth" that there was something extraordinary about Obama's relation to small donors. Even accepting the report's definition, Obama received twice as much "small funding" as did Hillary Clinton.

5. Also buried in the report is that, guess what -- McCain likely topped Obama by at least $10 million in the really big funds put together by "bundlers." The only place he held an advantage.

6. Finally, for now, also getting little attention in the press reports on the study is this line: "Forty-seven percent of Obama's money came from large donors compared to 56% for Kerry and 60% for both Bush and McCain." Yes, this is not night-and-day -- but still, gives lie to the spin that claims the report showed there was very little difference between the Obama funding and past campaigns.

Greg Mitchell is editor of Editor & Publisher. His latest book, on Iraq and the media, is "So Wrong for So Long." He has written two books for Random House on classic U.S. election campaigns, "The Campaign of the Century" and "Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady," and he has just completed a book on the 2008 campaign.

Comments

[Dianedp]

Thank you for breaking some of this down. I knew it wouldn't take long, unfortunately, for the media to regret their positive coverage of the Obama campaign. I appreciate you pointing out some of the twisted statistics making headlines.

[JDWPS]

Thank you for reporting the truth about that study. It was clearly nonsense and frustrating to read. I gave the maximum $4600 to Obama in small amounts as the campaigns progressed but I am NOT wealthy or important. And that money will buy me no influence.
Those of us who came to know Obama did all we could to help him get the exposure he needed so that all voters could have the opportunity to see the kind of leadership he offered.Th­e assertions in the other article that the small donors idea was a myth was another attempt to discount Obama's awe-inspiring victory.

[LeBeau59741]

Golly- I'm potentially a "large" campaign donor? How cool is THAT?!
I donated somewhere around $1000 over the course of the WHOLE rediculously long season (I started in the primaries)­... I do not recall any single donation being over $100, just what I could, when I could and that does not include what I spent on keeping the local campaign office stocked in coffee.

[DoTheMath]

Thank you, Greg Mitchell, for exposing this "study's" twisted use of data to support conclusions that it doesn't really support. I'm not sure why my other comment was screened out (no profanity or anything), so I'll try to keep it simple this time. Thanks again from a regular person who contributed to a worthwhile cause.

[pir anha]

oh, thank you for doing the legwork. i was distrustful of this study (or at least the way it was presented) as soon as i saw it pop up on huffpo. because throughout the campaign i've been on sites that organized small donations through actblue, and i've seen first-hand how people scrounged their last pennies together to make another donation. and i'd never witnessed such a thing before, never to that extent, never with that enthusiasm. i know it's just anecdotal evidence, and i was spurred on to find out whether my own impressions had simply been of too small a corner of the donour universe.

good to see also that despite the CFI being presented as a non-partisan organization, it turns out that the author and primary presenter is a neocon. that figures -- anything to lower the tremendous impact obama's campaign had on regular people who in unprecedented numvers felt included in the democratic process for once.

thank you again. it's people like you who look outside and tell us that it's snowing after pundit A claims it's raining and pundit B says it's sunny. :)

[trubluelefty]

The largest donation I gave as a retired person on disability was $50. that was with a gulp but I started back during Iowa and when things went well and we won I gave another $20 or so and if we had a down day I gave another $20. I gave about $1500 from start to finish during the campaign which puts me in with the fat cat's. I gave with such passion and joy as I have never given to a campaign before. I gave Kerry about a hundred. Glad to have some light shinning on the subject.

[TommyMcCarthy]

Typical of Greg Mitchell to bring some clarity to this much discussd but little understood subject.

I have heard Obama hyperpartisans insist that Sen. O got NO money from corporate contributors which is, of course, not even close to true.

And I have heard Obama detractors insist equally forcefully that he got ALL of his money from The Unions, or the trial lawyers, or the ACLU, or Minister Farukhan(!­!).....or _________(fill in name of farovite liberal boogie-man here) .....paten­tly absurd!

Obama undeniably revolutionized political fund-raising by building on the work of Howard Dean, MoveOn.org, and other pioneers in this field.....­...bringin­g millions of newly engaged voters onboard in the process.

Everyone's entitled to his own opinion...­...but not his own FACTS.

As is so often the case, Mr. Mitchell supplies "a little more light, and alot less heat" in his excellent piece.

HEY! I've never been a "big" fat-cat doner before! Who knew??

Regards, Greg
tm

Regards

[phylliscooper1]

Wow, I am considered a large donor. Living on a fixed income and sending small donations when I could was the least I could do to support P.E. Obama. I consider my donations and my time campaigning out of state, in Missouri, one of the great opportunities of my life. I agree with a poster up-thread who said all campaigns should be financed by individual voters. When, and if, a campaign runs out of money, oh well, just do the best you can. In 2008, the People have spoken, and I am proud to be in the majority.

[mizerello]

As one of Obama's supporters, I find it funny that I am considered a big donor. Until this election, I had donated on occasion to the DNC, but never very much. This time, from February 07 through the end of the campaign, I chose to donate my money to Obama, rather than stick it into my 401K (turns out it was a better use of the money?). I donated from $100-$250 on a monthly basis, with an occasionally larger donation. I am not a wealthy donor. I am on the lower end or at most, the middle end of the middle class. I know many other people in my financial circumstances who also donated to the campaign consistently, with contributions ranging from $50-$250 a month. I would suspect that the majority of Obama's money came from people like me--not rich democratic bundlers or donors. My final total contribution was about $4100. I am proud that my money helped to elect someone I hope will actually govern this country with honor and with respect for all of us. Obama won because regular people with incomes ranging from $30,000-$50,000 a year donated to him on a monthly basis.

[OneLiberalLady]

God bless you. My story is somewhat similar except for the fact that I did donate a fair amount to Kerry. With Obama I could never donate a huge amount at one time but over a year managed $2000. I am an average person - like you - who will never get nor expect any entree or direct return on my donation. Having Barack Obama in the White HOuse is return enough for me. I know that this was an entirely different election, having participated in a few of them , and that the report cited has to be extremely flawed. Guess it just goes to prove that you can twist statistics to prove anything you want.

[DoTheMath]

I agree. My income is about $30K, and I ended up in the "mid-range" donor category by contributing what I could afford several times over an 11-month period. What useful purpose does it serve to designate someone with a modest income who had never donated to a political candidate before as a "mid-range" or "large" donor? The categories seem arbitrary when I try to figure out a meaningful reason for dividing donors according to those particular cut-off amounts. On the other hand, if the authors started out with the goal of proving a particular point and analyzed the data with the idea of making that point, the categories make sense. That's the only way they make sense.

As you've pointed out, "regular people" is the category of donors that you and I and so many others belong to. Regular people donated a huge proportion (much more than half) of the enormous amount of money the Obama campaign raised, and the campaign used our money very effectively. Just like you, I'm proud that I was able to contribute to such a worthwhile cause. When I read about all the work that others were doing, I was grateful for their efforts and sacrifices. Since I didn't have the time or energy or skills to do what they were doing, I donated as much as I could. As you and others here have said, I feel it was a great investment.

[nellie]

Thanks for writing an article about this. People are really trying to fill up the time until they can start blasting Obama for actions he takes a president. It's going to be a contentious eight years. I'm glad we have people like you to push back against the dishonesty.

[fouchnickens]

Here, here! I was one of the countless donors who gave about $500 over the course of 20 months -- even though I am most assuredly a small (bank-account holding and lotsa-student-loan owing) donor. Thank you for taking the time to provide a more thoughtful, objective analysis than was reported in mainstream media channels (and even HuffPo, although to be fair the story was a link from the AP).

[joebaggadonuts]

I agree nellie. And thanks to you too for pushing back by letting folks know just how many people understand this game and are refusing to play it for a loss now. Greg Mitchell is writing from a position of authority, but you nellie, and I, joebaggadonuts, are mere ghosts in the internet, and have no presence but our words with which to make a difference.

[TheGuide]

All I can say is, I'm just glad Obama won.

[dadw5boys]

VOTES MUST BE COUNTED !!!

ESPICALLY THE ABSENTEE VOTES FROM THE MILITARY !!!

NO MORE REPUBLICAN CHANLLENGES OF "TOO MANY VOTES FROM ONE ADDRESS" !!

IT'S A MILITARY BASE !!!!!

STOP THE REPUBLICAN VOTER FRAUD!!!!

[MikeSinAZ]

The proper term for Republican voter suppression and theft of elections is ELECTION FRAUD!

Voter fraud is an urban legend created by the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove, Hannity and the rest to distract from the actual cause of stolen elections. Voter fraud is all but non-existent in reality and not a contributor to election fraud.

[BUZZARDSTKE]

I know that is right because i was a contributor a small donor, and I will do it again in four years, and this time I will be able to give even more.....T­hese ppl writing these articles are ppl looking for something negative to say about President Obama because they haven't got anything..­....SAD,SA­D, SAD.......­I am proud to be an Obama supporter and as a blogger I will help him pass through his legislation and do whatever else needs to be done.....R­EMEMBER WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS SAID......­WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!!!

BUZZZARDSTKE!!

[research]

I gave 1000$ I'm a""large" contributor?

[Grunty1]

#2 is the biggy. I gave $700 over the year in $50 increments. So obviously I'm the same as a millionaire maxing out his donations, right?

Well... to a neo-con apologist.

[LeftRight]

You're the same as a billionaire maxing out his donations AT ONE TIME to Obama, the DNC, at every 527 group that he can find!!!