an astonishing statistic about Dean's money

[dsc]

The average of Dean's donations over $200 was $205. That means for every donation of $1000 Dean recieved, Dean got 159 donations of $200. That is simply unbelieveable. Clearly he got a huge amount of his money, and he has raised more than Kerry has, from mid sized donations. He also has raised money from twice as many zip codes than Kerry has. Dean has utterly democratized fundraising. Source is CNBC Special report upon which Dean appeared.

[Cuban_Liberal]

1. WOW!

That's amazing! :D

[madfloridian]

2. He did a good job on there.

I don't think people really get it yet, the way that would eventually lessen the grip of huge donors.

[dsc]

4. He was great but the numbers floored me

I hope they repeat it so I can tape it and get the source for those stats. It is literally breathtaking the depth of his fundraising support.

[madfloridian]

5. The zip codes were mentioned.

He had almost as many as Bush, twice as much as Kerry. I am taping now, will double-check.

[mzmolly]

41. Don't tell me I missed another show...

waaahhhh!

[dorktv]

3. Going after the little donors takes time and effort

but BOY does it PAY OFF!

[ezee]

6. the little ones always

add up. 1+1+1+1+1 and pretty soon the race is WON.

[HalfManHalfBiscuit]

7. At first it looked unbelievable, but

1000+159(200)=32800

32800/160 donations = $205

You are dead right

[dsc]

8. Thanks for the check

I got the number using (1000-205)/5 which is 795/5 which is 159.

On edit the 1000-205 is the amount over average Dean would be with each 1000 donation. The 5 represents the amount below average each 200 donation is.

[AP]

9. I remember looking at Dean's first quarter FEC filings...

....and seeing multiple donations from a single person in the same quarter and the total was very high, and the people lived in high income areas, like Bel Air, and Beverly Hills, and the upper East Side of Manhattan.

I'm not saying that Dean DIDN'T get tons of small donations from people.

However, I think there was a plan early on to magnify that statisitic by asking big donors to break their donations into small donations, and to give over the internet as well.

I would not be surprised if Dean had a high average donation per DONOR (even with a low average donation per DONATION).

This is just my opinion, which I stated here when I first noticed it: after the first quarter I looked through a couple of the candidates' first quarter filings, and Dean was the only one where it really stuck out that there was an unusual number of multiple donors in the one three month period.

In fact, this stat might suggest that the big donors were asked to make 200-250 buck donations each month until they tapped out for the primary.

[dsc]

10. It doesn't work that way

They keep track of all your donations or else we wouldn't have campaign laws. All one would have to do is give $2000 donations over and over again.

[AP]

11. No, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm saying that I have a suspicion the statistic -- average donation -- is calculated by dividing the total donations by the total number of donations, rather than by the total number of donors.

That's why they say "average donation" and not "average amount given by donors."

I caught this in another statement of donations on one of those web sites which explained how they calculated the statistic. You'd have to check with CNBC to see what they're talking about.

[dsc]

12. I have never, and I mean never, seen

an average donation over $200 reported. For your theory to work he would normally use donations well under $200 to pull the average down. Only if he was a psychic would he have done this.

[AP]

13. Lots of people donated $10 a week.

Hell, just look at the FEC reports and remember, they were only required to report details of donations over $200, but were probably allowed to count all donations to come up with the stats.

[dsc]

15. The stat was clearly labeled

average of donations over $200. And any doubt about what that means should be dispelled by the much higher average than Dean's usual average. Dean was never over $80 bucks in average donation in any previous stat.

[AP]

24. Average donation doesn't tell you how much the average donor gave in total

Get my point?

If a campaign asks big donors to break their donations down into several large donations (even if they're over $200), they can lower the "average donation" while still having average donations PER DONOR which are very close to the other campaigns'.

I wasn't only talking about the CNBC report (which I didn't see), which is why I noted the impact on averages many small ($10) donations would have.

I can't believe I have to make this point several times.

It's pretty simple.

[Bill Todd]

25. It seems possible that you may have missed post #16 here (n/t)

[dsc]

33. It makes no sense

which is why you have to amke the point several times. The only way your theory works is for most of Dean's donations to be well under $200 with the ones over $200 pretty much left to their own devises. This stat never is reported as far as I can tell. Thus he would have had no reason at all to tell donors to give a bunch of $201 donations instead of one $1000 one. The difference isn't all that big for the trouble this behavior would have taken. The only reason that behavior would make sense is to alter this statistic which he had literally no reason whatsoever to think would be reported.

[HFishbine]

39. "how much the average donor gave in total"

The average TOTAL contribution size for all individuals donating more than $200.

Dean = $205.01

http://www.fundrace.org/avgContrib.html

[HFishbine]

38. The average TOTAL contribution size

for individual donors (not dontation) to Dean was $205.01.

http://www.fundrace.org/avgContrib.html

[madfloridian]

14. I disagree that large donors were *asked* to spread it out.

Actually, I know a lot of people who were part of the larger donors. They gave when the call went out during the campaign.

The bat was a big incentive many waited for, and they donated during the drives. A lot of people did that.

Also, donations are continuing. Many of us are still giving, not only to DFA but to individual candidates. That is what is meant by supporting grassroots candidates, letting people run who otherwise could not.

We were fairly large donors who did not max out at one time.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

47. Dean was using bundlers and it probably would have come out in the

general election and demonstrated he was a liar.

[Bill Todd]

16. Sounds as if you folks should be introduced to opensecrets.org

For some relevant information on this subject, see in particular http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/donordems.asp and scroll down to the botton table on the page.

Howard's campaign frequently bruited about the statement that his average donation was $77, and it probably was at least somewhere near that. But it's true that, as noted, many people made multiple donations (I certainly held out so that I'd be able to contribute money when it was most needed, and in fact had a great deal of legal room left at the time the campaign decided to stop requesting my help, which I would have been glad to continue giving).

The opensecrets.org data reflect total donations from individuals. And since the total take for the campaign from individual contributions ran a bit under $51 million ( http://www.opensecrets.org/presidential/summary.asp?ID=N00025663 ), one can draw some pretty clear conclusions therefrom.

Howard had 29,054 contributors who gave more than $200 apiece. But that only accounted for 40% of his total fund-raising: the other 60% came from people who gave $200 or less apiece. Thus those 29,054 relative fat-cats (insert smiley here) contributed a bit over $20 million, or an average of about $700 apiece (edit: less than 10% of them maxed out at a full $2000), regardless of how many individual donations that may have been spread across.

The other $30+ million came from individuals who donated $200 or less apiece: even if each had donated the full $200 there would have been over 150,000 of them, and in fact my recollection is that there were close to double that (meaning that their average total individual donation was little over $100). This jibes well with some figures I think I remember about donations during the 4th quarter of last year.

It is instructive to contrast the profile of Howard's donors with those of the other candidates. The only other profiles at all similar to his are those of Dennis Kucinich and Lyndon Larouche. Wes Clark and Carol Moseley Braun occupied something of a middle ground, and all the rest, major and minor candidates alike, pretty much reversed Howard's figures, obtaining the majority of their support from $2000 donations and a pittance from donations of $200 and under.

- bill

[Exgeneral]

17. The most AMAZING thing about Howard Dean's Money

It's all gone.

Whatever Trippi's firm charged for those ads, it clearly wasn't worth it.

[tinanator]

18. amazing but true?

I wonder if it would have been as gone if he had come in first in Iowa?

[Bill Todd]

19. You might wish to acquaint yourself with the facts of the matter

but unfortunately I can't find the relevant data at opensecrets.org in easily-assimilable form.

But my memory of some of the details is pretty good. Prior to last January, the campaign spent about $7 million on ads, and Trippi's firm got 7% commission on that, or about $500,000. Trippi himself as one of 3 partners got 1/3 of that, or about %165,000 - not all that unreasonable for someone who took no salary from the campaign and would have gotten that money even if he had spent the year playing golf (because his firm did Howard's Vermont advertising long before Trippi became campaign manager).

They probably spent close to that much again in Iowa and New Hampshire in January (little got spent thereafter - ISTR only about $200,000 in Wisconsin, and virtually nothing elsewhere) in an attempt to recover from an unexpectedly sudden collapse, but the total still didn't account for more than about 1/4 of total expenditures.

Some ad money was spent raising money. In mid-2003, for example, they ran some ads in Texas, of all places - to stick their finger in Bush's eye and raise their profile. More money poured in as a result.

But I've got to agree that the ads left a lot to be desired. Why they didn't manage to fix the problem I have no idea, but they retained Trippi's ad agency even after Trippi himself left, so it wasn't simply because Trippi refused to look elsewhere.

Most of the money went toward developing a true 50-state campaign organization, so as to be prepared after what everyone expected to be a brief primary season (as it in fact was) to take on Bush. They got that part right, but weren't prepared for the vicious fight within their own party.

- bill

[revcarol]

20. So now are Deaniacs primed to contribute regularly in small amounts

to THE PARTY?

So far, have seen no transfer effect.
Even Kerry fundraising does not seem to be assisted by Deaniacs in nearly the numbers they contributed to Dean. Are they dropping out of the process?

[madfloridian]

21. Excuse me? You have no idea.

When Dean met with Kerry, Kerry was presented with money. It was money from Dean supporters given through various Dean groups. These groups were with Dean that day as were his congressional delegates. They endorsed Kerry, but did not transfer to him officially.

I could tell you some of the amounts, but I don't have to do that.

If Kerry chooses not to make it known that Dean supporters did this, then shame on his campaign. Maybe it would not be proper.

My husband and I donated quite freely to one of the people who stood with Dean that day he endorsed Kerry.

Do not be critical of something you do not know about.

[madfloridian]

22. As to your question about "the party.

That is a person's own business. I will be glad to share with you what we have done, but I am still a good American even if I choose not to tell you.

We have been donating monthly to "the party" for years. Last year, we stopped our donations and gave them reasons by phone and letter. They did not care. I know of quite a few others who did the same in our area, good donors. They got NO response either.

We told "the party" we would be donating to candidates only for a while, and we gave specifics of why we were doing it. They again did not respond, did not care.

We do donate to candidates. I donated to Betty Castor today, we donated to our local candidate for congress last week. We will donate to another recommended by a friend outside of our district. Last year we donated to someone at DU who ran a campaign.

Now, I have a question for you. How did you feel about your money being spent on something as embarrassing as that red balloon flash ad?

I have called the DNC many times. There are certain people they simply do not respond to in any way.

This is how we choose to spend our money for now. We have and will donate to Democracy for America as an organization, and to individual candidates which it endorses.

We donated a sizable amount to Kerry one time. We will not do it again. We will vote for Kerry.

I hope this satisfies your query, and eases your mind that we are good Americans.

[Bill Todd]

23. The answer, on average, would seem to be "no"

At least from the comments I've seen in the DFA blog and forum, which of course only qualify as anecdotal.

In another thread I noted that while Kerry may get something like 75% of Howard's supporters to vote for him in November (and probably a noticeably higher percentage of Howard's Democratic supporters - we're a fairly eclectic lot overall), he probably would be lucky to get 25% of the other forms of support (money, volunteer effort) that Howard got from them.

I'm afraid that many of us really don't care much for Kerry or the party at this point. But we'd likely respond pretty favorably should they actually make significant moves to fix the problems we have with them.

- bill

[jpgray]

26. Those who wish to defeat Bush will do so

Those who are more interested in internecine pettiness will withhold funds for spite's sake. :D

Sure, there will be claims that Kerry is beholden to X, or that he caved on Y, and that will be used to justify not donating or working for Kerry. As someone too far to the left--and too cognizant of each man's record--to take Dean or Kerry seriously as instruments of change in this country, I am committed enough to defeating Bush to donate to Kerry whenever I can.

I gave $250 each to Kerry, Dean and Kucinich during the primaries--but my heart was only in the Kucinich donation. Of the establishment folks, I was most interested in Dean and Kerry.

[madfloridian]

27. Kerry will get the votes of most.

Why is no one aware that Kerry was given money the other day from Dean supporters? People criticize what they do not know. Dean can't very well announce it, can he?

I did give Kerry a considerable one-time sum. I feel it equally important to get some good Democrats back into congress, and that is what we are trying to do.

I will not donate to the party for while, as my money is going to good use elsewhere. The flash ad was almost embarrassing, and last I heard it was still there.

[jpgray]

28. There are always reasons not to donate to a candidate

Howard Dean's mixed record on the environment and corporate responsibility would have been an easy excuse for me to give for denying him my money. I chose not to do that, however, because my goal was and is to beat Bush. So rather than giving $750 to Kucinich, I gave to two other men who are not at all indicative of my political views, but still seemed to me the best compromise on electability and record.

Now that we have a presumptive nominee, he will receive what money I can give. I may end up protesting this guy after January, but at least I will have helped to remove a much more dangerous and authoritarian regime than Kerry will ever create.

[madfloridian]

30. That is the good thing about our country.

We are all free to make our own decisions. Didn't I just say I donated a good sum to Kerry?

[jpgray]

31. Not doing a fund drive here

Just explaining my own views on this issue. I certainly don't want to accuse individual DUers of some sort of progressive 'impiety' if they don't donate to Kerry.

I do resent any implication that true leftists/Democrats should feel reticent about giving money to Kerry, or about voting for him. As someone further left than Kucinich on the political compass, I feel my enthusiastic support of Kerry is less an endorsement of his views than a condemnation of the Bush's administration. I will be happy if I've helped to defeat the unusual danger of an out-of-control authoritarian regime, because while Kerry may be bourgeois and business-as-usual, he does not represent the overwhelming threat to what freedoms we still retain that the Bush administration does.

In other words, I feel that all leftists have an interest in defeating Bush, and therefore should work toward that end in whatever way they feel appropriate. I don't personally feel that giving to Kerry violates any principles, because a donation is in no way an explicit endorsement of all a candidate stands for. If others feel differently, they are free to act however they feel is right.

[dsc]

34. I realize that some people find this hard to believe

but some of us aren't made of money. I have a very, very limited supply of money to give to candidates. I have an incumbent state Senator (D) in trouble, an incumbent Congressman (R) we might knock off, and an admittedly long shot candidate for US Senate. Kerry did catch one break in that my Congressional candidate has no need for money (if she can't win with $3 million then she can't with $3 million $50) but I currently rank the other two races as more important than Kerry. In Ohio we have only 33 total state senators and currently we have only 14 Dems. That race is important. IF Fingerhut takes off his race is important. If I find money then Kerry will find some too. It is that simple. I would have ranked Dean ahead of these other races. I don't rank Kerry that way.

[jpgray]

36. Use your money however you want.

If defeating Bush is less important to you than the races you mention, that's your business.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpgray]

44. You're arguing with yourself--you get no animosity from me

You must choose between top priorities: working to change the president or working for one of your congressional races, state or otherwise. However you want to justify your decision is entirely up to you, but I am free to tell you why I work for Kerry, so I have.

[RetroLounge]

43. Setting up your scapegoat a little early, hey?

If Kerry loses, it will have NOTHING to do with Dean or his supporters, so ya better find a different excuse.

RL

[jpgray]

45. You are responding to your own allegations. I have made none of this kind

Dean supporters will do what they want, and Dean will do what he wants. All I outlined above were the reasons why I will donate to Kerry. You are trying to have an argument with me, but right now you are arguing with yourself--I won't blame anyone for Kerry's defeat. People will blame whoever suits their agenda, but I will blame no one because blame in something as intricate as a presidential campaign is very difficult to assign.

[dansolo]

40. Kerry isn't the only Democrat running in November

I contributed to Dean, but I will not contribute to Kerry. If I choose to contribute more money, there are plenty of places that I can contribute that will help out the Democratic Party other than by giving it to John Kerry. We still need to win back the Senate and the House, and I'm sure there are going to be at least a few close elections in there. Bush is a problem, but he is not the only problem out there.

[jpgray]

46. Again, explain it however you want.

If your priorities lie elsewhere than the presidential election, that's your business and you don't need to justify it to anyone.

[JI7]

29. some dean supporters are bundling money together for kerry

this means there are different groups of dean supporters out there. and each group often takes contributions from their members and puts it together as one contribution from that particular group. and some dean supporters just send money to kerry through some special link which would show they supported dean in the primary. the clark people also have that. and for those who can't afford to give any money they help out in other ways such as volunteering .

[Justitia]

32. giving to candidates, other orgs now

Both my husband & I were "federally maxed" donors to Dean.
Hubby did his donations at various times, for special requests (bats) usually at $250 increments.
I gave the combined max in probably 5 pymts.
Neither one of us had a "set strategy", but I knew I would end up giving the max, hubby worked his way there by eventuality.

Just like madfloridian, I have quit giving to DNC and will not give to Kerry, both for an assortment of reasons that I don't need to go into here.
I, too, tried to make contact with the DNC over several issues and a few yrs - all ignored.
Guess I'm ignoring them now.

However, I still give liberally (hee, hee) and often.
Madfloridian - I just gave to Betty Castor too, via Emily's List. I'm a regular contributor to Emily's List (and their recommended candidates).
I'm a long-time supporter of Planned Parenthood.
I'm also a mbr of and regular contributor to MoveOn.org.
I have given pretty generously to those candidates that openly supported Dean (Boswell of Iowa, Jesse Jackson Jr. come to mind).
During and just after Dean's campaign I gave to Truth&Hope.org.
I support local Democrats in Texas - Lloyd Doggett is one of my favorite beneficiaries.

So, Dean's supporters are still out here and still giving.
I must say, I became a much more active (& generous) donor after I became involved with Dean's campaign in early 2003.
And I don't just mean to Dean.
He convinced me that it wasn't going to get done without me, and there were lots of areas to give my support to.
The man has forever changed me and now I actively look for those candidates and organizations I can happily throw my support to.

I don't think the DNC has the first clue of the long-lasting effect of one Howard Brush Dean.

I miss him like hell. :(

[madfloridian]

35. Good post, Lady Texan.

I really believe what you just posted would be echoed by many of our Dean supporters' group here. We DO things. We GIVE to efforts and candidates.

I don't believe people really understand yet what Dean has accomplished and still IS accomplishing. Most think of it simply in terms of running or not running, but it is so much more than that.

[mzmolly]

42. Wow, very interesting.

*sigh* I only wish he'd have won the election. But I firmly believe he is going to become a very high profile agent of change regardless.