Campaign contributions - sources

[Chuck Moreland]

With all the attention on campaign fund raising now, I thought it would be interesting to see were the money is coming from.

Let's see a breakdown of Obama's war chest, and McCain's. By demographics, major contributors, PAC money, whatever.

In the interest of public disclosure, I figured this would be an easy Goodle search.

Not so. Where can we find this?

[Rick Lee]

www.fec.gov

[Rick Lee]

BTW, it's pretty amazing how much of the campaigns' money comes from small dollar donors. Everyone thinks only fat cats write the checks. But the irony is that the small dollar donors are the most valuable ones, since you can keep coming back to them for more, while the fat cats usually max out their contribution limits in one check and are thereafter off limits.

[john70t]

Todays New and Improved Government is on a need-to-know basis, kinda like China.

[Chuck Moreland]

I downloaded the line-item contribution files such as this one for Obama.

http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/MapAppDownload.do?cand_id=P80003338&cand_nm_title=Obama,%20Barack&downloadComeFrom=mapApp&tranComeFrom=mapApp&tranType=

I imported them into Excell and did some sorting.

What I find is intriguing, and I am suspicious by nature.

The vast majority of contributors made multiple contributions, and I don't mean 2 contributions - I mean 5-10 contributions.

Many of these multi-contributors made more than one contribution on the same date. Many every few days, erratic.

Occupation is also listed. Attorneys and lawyer contributors number many 100s. Physicians, Engineers, CEOs, and the like are over-represented. Blue collar workers are grossly under-represented. Mail carriers for example total 8 contributors.

While this might be explained due to economic position, the bias is too great here - and low-paid individuals are free to make small contributions.


Call me crazy, but I think that many (most) individuals that contribute would make a single contribution. When I see one person making 2 or 3 small contributions in the same day, I call BS. When I see one person making 10 contributions of varying sizes with erratic timing, I call BS. When I see 90% of the occupations requiring Master's degrees, I call BS.

I took a look at McCains file. I see some similarities.

I hereby call for a formal investigation.

I think the suspicious patterns suggest many of these "individual" contributions are fronting large contributions to hide the true identity.

[tabs]

Originally Posted by Chuck Moreland

I downloaded the line-item contribution files such as this one for Obama.

http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/MapAppDownload.do?cand_id=P80003338&cand_nm_title=Obama,%20Barack&downloadComeFrom=mapApp&tranComeFrom=mapApp&tranType=

I imported them into Excell and did some sorting.

What I find is intriguing, and I am suspicious by nature.

The vast majority of contributors made multiple contributions, and I don't mean 2 contributions - I mean 5-10 contributions.

Many of these multi-contributors made more than one contribution on the same date. Many every few days, erratic.

Occupation is also listed. Attorneys and lawyer contributors number many 100s. Physicians, Engineers, CEOs, and the like are over-represented. Blue collar workers are grossly under-represented. Mail carriers for example total 8 contributors.

While this might be explained due to economic position, the bias is too great here - and low-paid individuals are free to make small contributions.


Call me crazy, but I think that many (most) individuals that contribute would make a single contribution. When I see one person making 2 or 3 small contributions in the same day, I call BS. When I see one person making 10 contributions of varying sizes with erratic timing, I call BS. When I see 90% of the occupations requiring Master's degrees, I call BS.

I took a look at McCains file. I see some similarities.

I hereby call for a formal investigation.

I think the suspicious patterns suggest many of these "individual" contributions are fronting large contributions to hide the true identity.

Your kidding aren't you, this is really amazing stuff you have discovered.

[David]

The multiple contributions in one day seem weird, but the rest of it seems normal.

I doubt people without the extra $$ to spare are going to bother to send $10 for a POTUS campaign.

This is the first year I've actually donated and I make decent money. I didn't send in all I planned to contribute at one time.

[cairns]

Here's another couple of sites that will open your eyes:

http://taxpayer.net/

http://www.opensecrets.org

I especially like the latter. Who say's Democrats aren't the party of the wealthy?

[Rick Lee]

The only reason I can see for multiple contributions in one day is if they were all made within one FEC reporting period and thus counted on the same day for the report. But again, the small dollar donors are the most valuable to campaigns precisely because they can make multiple contributions throughout several reporting periods. And one person can write separate checks on behalf of their spouse and kids. Someone who writes the max amount, $4600, is only valuable because that money takes so little effort to get. But then, once they write that check, you might as well take them off your mailing list. They can do nothing else to help your campaign after maxing out for one cycle.

Why would you be surprised to see so few blue collar workers writing checks? You think they have a lot of money to throw around? And even if they did, why would they give it to political campaigns? When I worked at the RNC, the vast majority of the party's money came in checks of under $100. At that time the vast majority of the Dems' money came in checks of over $1000. People always say Republicans are the party of the rich and Dems of the working man. The exact opposite was true (at least around 1995-1998). When Terry McAuliffe took over the DNC, he brought their low-dollar fundraising up to speed and that's helped the Dems a lot. But until then, they had next to no grassroots support compared to the GOP.