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.
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i exceeded the $200 cap to count as a small donor by this study's standards, yet i donated all of my money in increments of $50 or less over the course of nearly a year; i hardly think any objective observer would categorize me as anything other than a small donor.
Gosh, I gave $250. Gee, am I a large donor. What about those that give the max - $2300, what are they called. I gotta tell my son that this right wing Cheney guy working for the right wing AEI with no right wing spin to come up with has designated my $250 as 'large contribution' to Obama.
"... the report relates, deep within, that Obama, in fact, received donations under $200 from a staggering 2.5 million people..."
Case closed.
The important point is that because so many people contributed to Obama's campaign he is not obligated to to the few or to special interest groups, but to the many. He is already demonstrating by his actions that he intends to do what is best for America and for the world, not for select groups. I loved his response to the reporter who asked what he was going to do for his "friends". He pointed out that this is not about "friends" - this was the old way of doing things. He is selecting administrative personnel based on competence and capability, not on friendship or ideology, the way of the past. These are the words of a true statesman. I fully expect him to follow those words with congruent deeds.
I am definitely a small donor. Over the course of his primary and general campaign, I don't think I gave over $100 at any one time. I mostly contributed in increments of $25 and $50. By the end of the campaign, I think I had given a total of $550 which somehow makes me a "large" donor. Heh.
Yes, the author had an agenda. I'm not sure what the point of his paper is, though. Obama still had an unprecedented number of donors and their strong support won him the election. It wouldn't matter how much money a candidate had if he didn't have enough supporters to go out and actually pull the lever for him.
I gave 25 bucks a month for about fifteen months. That adds up to $375. I would definitely consider myself a small donor. I kept hearing this same tired argument from my conservative friends during the campaign. But it's a fact that the average donor to the Obama campaign gave about $85. That's pretty small, people.
Conservatives need to at least get their stories straight, and decide if Obama's a fascist, or a marxist, or a terrorist, or a novice, or a typical pol, or too black, or too white, or...
I made the following points on the other thread before I saw this blog. I hoped I'd gotten my logic wrong, but it seems I didn't. Hard to believe MSM didn't look harder at this...
CFI's argument hinges on the $200 definition of "small donor," which isn't washing. First, this campaign had a strong fundraising timeline of over 12 months. Second, the Internet facilitated both the donor base and more frequent donations. Third, the intensity of this contest spurred more donations from more people. Federal reporting guidelines notwithstanding, an independent study on this topic should use a more fair standard, caveat its conclusions with disclaimers about the accuracy of the Fed's information, and provide access to the raw data.
Barring recalculation of "small donor" at a figure like $690--which is 15% of the legal giving limit--a fairer threshold would be the $1,000 line already included in the figures. Obama raised 53% of his contributions from that sector, to McCain's 41%, Kerry's 44%, and GWB's 38%. This sector accounted for 67% of Obama's revenue compared to McCain's 47%, Kerry's 57%, and GWB's 43%. Using the more reasonable $1K limit, Obama's small-donor claims remain intact.
The $200 "small donor" definition needs to be updated. The $1K ceiling may be too high, but a small-donor ceiling set at a mere 4.35% of the legal giving limit of $4,600 seems as inadequate and unfair today as a $75M public campaign financing limit in a billion-dollar race.
So the CFI study was authored by someone with right wing roots, an agenda, and time on their hands. Guess we won't be able to let our guard down anytime soon. Way to go Greg.
Yet none of those things in and of itself keeps the analysis from being true any more than the rebuttal was by a left-winger, with and agenda and time on their hands. Every analysis ever done was done to prove some point.
This "myth" as the study finds just threw down the hammer in the 2008 elections
Coverage of the study is another example of what ails the MSM--blindly accepting what is fed them--calling Judy Miller
We'll get the real answer to this when we see how Obama governs.
no sh#t. How about when he REALLY wins the election.
I don't understand what you're driving at
Poor Cheryllou. Are you saying McCain won???? Or are you still in denial about the illegitimate Bush administration??? I guess you failed to notice the hundreds of thousands of supporters for Obama in previously red states. Even though the GOP tried to steal this one, too, the American people came out in such numbers for Barack, it could not be done. Thank you America. I'm already sleeping more soundly.
Small has nothing to do with the amount given. Small has to do with the amount of money those who gave, earn and have. How about making the defintion of "small" fit into those who fit into the middle and lower income bracket of 250,000. What are the % if one does that?
This was the first time I ever contributed to a Presidential candidiate as it was for many I know. Do the Obama naysayers want us to e-mail them verifications of our conviction and dontation amounts?
This is not difficult research and we all know what it would reveal again. Of course the right will sprinkle the results with thier distortion dust to make it look as unsavory as thier practices.
I gave over $2000 to the Obama campaign, but in many little increments over a year and a half. I had never given to a political campaign before. I have no lobbying or political connections, nor do I expect my donations to buy me any influence I am certainly not a "large donor", though this study would attempt to lump me in with the multimillion dollar bundlers that most rational people think of as large donors.
So, the author of this study worked for Cheney. The LA Times and USA Today articles both described this Campaign Finance Institute as "independe
Despite the myth that the media are selling about Obama's donor base, Obama had an overwhelming money advantage over McCain because of the millions of small donors. I think that the small donors to Obama's campaign may have made the difference between victory and defeat.
Obama would have been buried in the McCain and third-party attack ads that painted him as a scary Marxist secret Muslim (and black) radical who pals around with terrorists and who will raise taxes on the middle class. But he was able to afford massive ad buys that countered the smears.
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