Obama Small Donor Base = Horse Hockey
shock and *yawn*
Everybody knows [ok - right off, that phrase blows credulity clean outta the water] 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.
In fact, Obama’s base of small donors was almost exactly the same percent as George W. Bush’s in 2004—Obama had 26% and the great Republican satan 25%. Obviously, this is unacceptable to current popular thinking.
But wait—there’s more!
...reported throughout the campaign, only 26% of Obama’s contributions through last August and only 24% through Oct. 15 came from people whose total donations added up to less than $200.
The key word there being “total.”
It comes down to which definition of “small donor” you accept:
Someone who donated to the Obama campaign by scraping together $199, period.
Or someone who donated $199 to the Obama campaign several times, perhaps totaling close to the $4,600 legal limit for the primary and general elections.
Not counting the donations made by Person O.R. Personsunknown whose donations added up to $187,000 or more but, because the security software had been disabled, were allowed to donate under phony names with non-existant addresses using throw-away, pre-paid cards from Parts Unknown.
But that’s not important, now. Right?
"After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC),” the CFI study says, “it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated."
Nice work.
[/sarc]
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