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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Greg Mitchell made an excellent point in that Barack Obama has been running for two years and how it's absurd to say someone who gave $100 in 2007 and $200 in 2008 is a large donor.
The RNC raised 130 million more than the DNC, but the corporate media doesn't report that.
The RNC and their media surrogates deal in twisting numbers and spinning them any way they want.
"The RNC and their media surrogates deal in twisting numbers and spinning them any way they want."
I suppose we can look forward to Brit Hume, George Stephonopolous, George Will, Bill Kristol and other GOP media surrogates and wankerific hacks echo-ing the "Obama fundraising myth" meme on the Sunday Morning shows. I so don't look forward to seeing it but I know its coming.
Email, fax or call them and tell them to stop spinning the lies.
Good. Thanks.
This "study" is just a way to give the MSM some anti-Obama propaganda to turn into accepted fact.
The level of dishonesty in spinning this (especially, as you say, redefining "small donor" and therein also negating the statistical importance of the AMAZING number of -repeat- and habitual donors), is typical right-wing hypocrisy.
I expect to see misleading right-wing media hit jobs like this on a monthly basis throughout the Obama presidency so FOX, CNN etc. can use them. I hope you and others will continue to call them on it....
These spin jobs have to be rebutted, and rebutted hard whenever and wherever they appear. Even so, I'm afraid they will get into the public record via Lexus Nexus and in the future, writers will refer to those earlier articles as articles of faith. That's how the warping and distortions become "articles of common knowledge", the true "myths".
[conclusion]
Never, NEVER EVER trust an analysis that doesn't include the median, and with this volume of discrete data points, the mode. This analysis doesn't even give you basic information to calculate a simple mean (average) donation. The median is the exact middle of all contributions - half contributed more, half less than a specific amount. The average salary fir the 22 people you work with may be $1MM, but if the Chairman and CEO each make $10.5MM then this is not a valid measure The median is much more useful. The mode - a rather arcane measure to most people, is the single amount donated more than any other. This is the "sweet spot" of all donations, preferred by more donors than any other amount; the single largest data cluster. Depending on what percent of donors choose the mode, you can infer whether small donors are representative of the "typical" contributor.
If Malbin tried to present this as serious analysis for peer review he'd be crucified. It's probably too much to ask The Times or the WSJ - which would ban Malbin were this a prospective analysis - to actually analyze this analysis.
perfect comment.
It is not an analysis. It is a propaganda piece.
It is clear that the right wing in the form of people like Mike Malbin are at it again.
But all of us know that 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.
What is sad is that papers like the Huff, the NY Times and the LA Times are perpetuating the myth of the myth by not doing their homework in truly understanding the failure of the initial anlysis.
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! Congratualtions to us and to President-elect Obama.
To me a "small" donor is one who does not expect, given the size of his or her contribution, to obtain any influence or access in return. By this criterion, large donors are pretty much restricted to bundlers, without borderline cases, given the current campaign finance laws. This is the criterion I think Obama had in mind when he rejected public financing on the grounds that his large donor base already addressed the point of public financing, i.e. eliminating the buying of influence. The condition "given the size" is intended to avoid the issue of intent; I fully understand and honor the fact that many who gave the limit, or who bundled others' contributions, sought no quid pro quo return.
During one of the worst economic years since the late 70s, when people are losing houses and jobs left and right, gas is $4 a gallon, and the basics are going up like a balloon full of helium, Barak Obama raises an astronomical amount of money from "small doners." And, this is when his strongest base of support were young adults, who typically have very little money to spare, and the Black community, which has made great strides economically, but still largely lags behind in pay and job opportunities, and is a small part of the population. None of this adds up, even with all of the fundraising and donations mentioned here by various other groups, individuals, etc. Of course, when "small" is considered hundreds of dollars, that does change the game. I'm pretty middle class, and a few hundred is a lot of money to me. So, maybe "small" has changed like the definition of "is."
Young adults may not have a lot of money to spare, but if you'd only need 100,000 college students donating $10 to make a million dollars. Take into consideration that Obama had about 3 million donors and it's easy to see how he raised so much money.
Thank you, Mr. Mitchell for debunking this report. It was obviously poorly reported - and the poor reporting was evident to any of us SMALL DONORS who actually contributed more than $200 over time.
I signed up for a recurring donation of less than $20 and made occasional extra contributions - how do I not count as a "small donor?" All this report reveals is the need to change the definitions - which is exactly what one would expect out of such a transformative campaign.
Particularly - I would like someone to explain just who these "bundlers" are. I know Obama had some of the traditional bundlers, union folks and the like, who bundled thousands of donations together. But what about the fact that Obama was able to create "small donor bundlers" - enabling small donors to reach out to friends and families and bundle their donations? How are those donations counted?
QT
It was a long primary and a long run for the presidency
And not one penny of those donations went to buying clothes for the VP or family of the President election - the man has honor on scruples..
Please don't disrespect Alaska just because Palin is from there. There were many Alaskan Obama supporters who were working just as hard as Obama supporters in other states ;-)
Once again...
The ideologically hogtied right, in their efforts to convince themselves that the game has not fundamentally changed, will delude themselves into "their own reality." Fine. They'll just keep shrinking, and just keep losing...
Good for Obama! He got all these small donations adding up to larger donations made by ordinary people and we get the prize. Obama for President.
I want to see raw data.
Or at least a table with rows for donation amounts of $4600, with columns for Number of Donors In Category and Total Amount Received in Category. And a similar table for McCain. Or maybe deciles of total contributions, t.e. first 10% of total contributions came from n donors with an average contribution of $, second 10% came from the next n donors with an average contribution of, etc. I would find this very informative.
Thank goodness. I'm glad to hear I'm not mythical.
No - you're not a myth, and neither am I! :)
QT
I gave Obama's campaign about $250 total (usually $ 25 every two to three months) and bought campaign merchandize for $60, for the grand total of $310.00. I suppose that does not qualify me as small donor in Malbin's book. It is amazing how right wing conservatives are always bent on re-writing history to advance their ideological agenda.
Thanks, Greg, I noticed that too - $200 is an arbitrary cut-off for "small" donations. The Campaign Finance Institute's figures for total donations of $999 or less show:
Obama 2008 - 53%
Kerry 2004 - 44%
McCain 2008 - 41%
Bush 2004 - 38%
I don't call the difference between 53% and 38% a "myth" - Obama's figure for 2008 is 39% higher than Bush's in 2004.
It matters very little now how he did it. He did it - Obama won the White House.
So I guess I'm a big donor. I probably gave close to $250. The thing is I sent it in increments of $25 at a time, because that's all I can afford. So much for me the fat cat.
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