Over $2,000,000 in 9 Days - Go Dean!

[Northwind]

Howard Dean raised over $2,150,000 from Dec 23 to midnight Dec 31, for a quarter-end total of $15,386,183.25 (average donation, $104)!

Starting sluggishly due to the Christmas Holiday, the bat had acheived only $150,000 by the morning of Dec 26. But after Chistmas wore off, Dean supporters came through and the bat surged $2,000,000 in only 6 days!

Last quarter Dean made history by breaking Bill Clinton's all time Democratic quarterly fund raising record of $11,000,000 with an incredible total of $14,800,000 at an average donation of $77. This quarter, Dean once again makes history by not only breaking his own record set just last quarter, but also by actually increasingly his fund raising total during the usual slow 4th quarter fund raising period. Even Clintion, the former record holder, saw his totals fall by 36% in his 4th quarter efforts in 1996.

Dean has raised approximately $40,000,000 for the year 2003, putting him far ahead of any of his Democratoc rivals.

Congratulations to Howard Dean, but more importantly, congratulations to his millions of dedicated supporters, those who gave money or no, for making this the most siginificant year in political history.

On a personal note, $50 of that $2,000,000 is from me! :)

On to the White House!

[bearfartinthewoods]

1. how many millions??? of supporters, that is.

for the last couple days i have been asking questions to try and determine the true scope of dean's support. by support i'm specificly looking at active verses passive via financial support.

the question was sparked by some internet campaign factoids that i stumbled on which included the fact that join mccain was the first politician to ever raise a half million dollars in a day and that there were i million republicans signed up on line to support bush in the last election, four years before the dean internet revolution.

the nature of grass roots makes it difficult if not impossible to get true figures on the dean support so i'm trying to extrapolate the growth or shrinkage in the numbers of supporters by looking at the rate at which money was raised in the fourth quarter as compared to the third.

it appears there has been little to no incease. i asked why and was given thre answers: holiday giving had tapped out the donor wallets, unemployement made giving impossible and many donors had reached there 2000.00 limit.

i was also told that dean's fundraising was impressive because they had surpassed the previous record set by clinton and gore. there lies the rub. during the clinton and gore campaigns, the limit for donations was 1000.00. it is currently 2000.00 so suddenly, the dean figures seem a little less impressive.

the dean team is proud that the average contribution is under 100.00.

that scares me. if the dean financial support can be waylaid by holiday gifting and unemplayement, how can we have confidence that this approach will fund us competitively against the bushco warchest which is currently 110 million in an uncontesteed primary and is expected to be anywhere between 200,000,00 and 400,000,000 by election time. if donors have already reached their limits and others have other higher priority considerations such as vacations and back to school or college expenses, what happens to the fundraising as we go on down the road?

[Cheswick2.0]

2. oh, about 200 billion supporters for Dean

ask a silly question............

[Northwind]

3. This again?

Ok, let me see if I explain this in such a way as to put it to rest for you, at last.

First of all, we are not required to get ID tags or sign a central registry to be a Dean supporter. Over half a million people have signed up through the web site, but that is only people who have net access. So the absolute, down to the person accurate to 6 places number of Dean supporters is not known.

Second, you have brought up (again!) that Dean's increase in fund raising for this quarter was up only slightly from last quarter. Now aside from the arguments of it being the holidays and some supporters having already reached their $2000 limit (not that many have that I know of), to understand you have to look at the history of 3rd vs 4th quarter fund raising totals for Dem candidates.

As we know, in 3rd quarter 1995 Clinton set a then-record for fund raising with 11 million, but in the 4th quarter of that year, his fund raising went down by 36%, amounting only about 6 million. Gore showed the same trend, going down a full 40% from his 3rd to 4th quarter totals in 1999.

Were Dean's support to have not grown a great deal, it is reasonable to assume he would have followed the same trend and seen his fund raising reduced by a similar figure, and would therefore have only garnered about 9 million. But rather than his fund raising going down for the 4th quarter, it went up by a few percent. Extrapolating, however, from what general trends tell us he should have made in the 4th quarter (the aforementioned 9 million), he actually increased his fund raising by 40% over what he could reasonably have been expected to pull in based on historical data.

Clear?

[Hep]

4. But how many supporters does he have?

:)

Just playing along.

[bearfartinthewoods]

6. you are ignoring the increase from 1000 to 2000

which, when factored in screws up the reliance on the percentage of increase.

you are also relying on the myth of the number of supporters signed up on the website. it is no more accurate than '40,000' DUers. even the number of total contributers can't be relied on because there is no way to know if someone who contributed five bucks, six months ago is still on board or not.

dean supporters are using his supporters, this grassroots army as a reason to join his campaign....as i want to see some evidence that the army is what it is claimed to be. if we are to dismiss the DLC and it's fund raising prowess and rely on the grassroots, why is it not important to seek the depth of the 'roots' and the extent of the movement.

his polls are drooping which would indicate his support is defecting.
i see no indication to counter that conclusion and asked to be shown evidence to the contrary.

[Northwind]

7. I am not ignoring it.

When the average donation is still only about $100, the increase in total allowed per person is most irrelevent. According to Dean's site, 90% of his contributors have not yet reached their limit, so the limit increase is a non-factor at this point.

Also, there are no polls showing a general ternd in "defection" from the Dean camp. One or two polls by different organizations have shown a slight slip, while tohers show him holding steady or even increasing, but unless those that show a slip are bolstered by further polls in coming weeks, it is not a trend, but a statistical anomaly.

[bearfartinthewoods]

10. no, it's not. raising the upper limit skews the average which means

the number of small donations rise in relation to large donations.
it's the 400 million of bushbucks that we have to match with people who have, at least to this point, donated less than 100 bucks.

the total number of people wiling/able to donate to the max is VERY relevant of we are to walk away from the DLC, which dean seems intent on doing.

[Northwind]

13. Oh, so now the Dem candidate has to match Bush

In order for you to support him?

Please, by all means, tell me which candidate has shown any glimmer of a hope in hell of raising that. I am all ears.

[Walt Starr]

14. That change is completely waylaid by the fact that

Clinton was running unopposed and Dean is running in a field of nine.

Even Gore did not face so much opposition in 1999.

Dean '04.

[stickdog]

17. In Dean's case, the amount he has raised in contributions over $1,000

is negligible.

[stickdog]

5. Well, if Dean's record breaking fundraising really "scares" you ...

what about that of every other Democratic candidate?

Against a field of 8 other candidates (and despite daily Dean denunciations from many of these 8), Dean has now raised over 30 million dollars in just 6 months -- a full 11 months before the election.

And Dean raised that 30 million almost exclusively through the small donations of regular, average citizens -- 90% of whom aren't anywhere near their donation limits.

Just imagine what Dean could do if his party actually started working with him instead of continually stabbing him in the back.

[bearfartinthewoods]

8. because the others have not built a campaign on the dissing of the DLC

and it's the DLC which is, for the most part, the force behind the fundraising which elected clinton and gore.

if dean wants to end the involment of the DLC, he has to be able to replace the money that the DLC will raise for any other candidate.

please don't tell me that i'm the only one thinking about this stuff?

[Northwind]

9. Well, since the DLC raised the amounts of money for Clinton and Gore

That Dean has since blown out of the water, I think this speaks well to his ability to "replace" the DLC money.

Are you listening to yourself? You are actually sitting there saying that you are scared of the fund raising abilities compared to the DLC of a guy who has already proven he can completely annihilate the DLC in fund raising. He has not merely matched their ability, or come close, he has trounced them into the dust. Your question has already been answered by circumstance.

As another poster said, if you are scared of Dean's ability to raise money, how do you feel about the other 8? Kerry's a DLC guy, and he got only 2.5 million this quarter from donations, and then mortgaged his home to get 6.4 million more, still putting him 6 million behind Dean. Clark's a DLC guy, and while he defeitely did well this quarter, he still did not match Dean. If you cannot support the guy who has raised more money than any Democrat in history, how can you support the ones that have rasied much less?

[bearfartinthewoods]

11. he has trounced them to this point.

you are opporating on the premise that this will continue, laying our future as a party on this line of 'faith'. i'm an agnostic. i require something more than faith.

as the the DLC's lackluster efforts for the remaining candidate's it's my understanding that they DON'T raise funds for primary races
at all.

so you are comparing dean's efforts to a non effort....sort of takes the meaning of trounced to a different plane.

[Northwind]

12. If you think the DLC will refuse to raise funds for Dean

As the nominee, I have no help for you. The once underdog now frontrunenr has proved beyond doubt he can raise more money than anyone else. This is a fact. So invent reasons to hate him if you wish. I am sorry your candidate (whoever that is) cannot come close to Dean. Maybe you should stop blaming Dean for that.

[Walt Starr]

18. My, what a predicament

The DLC won't raise funds for a Dean camapign in the General Election.

Many Dean supporters refuse to support anybody by Dean.

It would seem we have a conundrum.

[stickdog]

15. And he just more than doubled Clinton's DLC-assisted 4th quarter record.

Dean also beat Clark's DLC-assisted 4th quarter fundraising by several million.

Any more questions?

But thanks for confirming my suspicions that the DLC actually likes Bush better than Dean.

[bearfartinthewoods]

16. there is an old saying that as you spend the first day of the year

so shall you spend the rest. i intend to go for a walk enjoy a beautiful day and think, have a good meal and some great sex and then come back here and work to get bush out of the white house.

even if that means asking pesky questions which it seems no one else is asking or answering.

[madfloridian]

20. Take a long walk.

Don't hurry.

[Northwind]

21. The questions are being asked

I asked them myself early on, and then I got my answer from Dean himself, when he showed me he had what it takes.

You ask the questions continuously, and you have them answered quite thoroughly by myriad Dean supporters and by the evidence of your eyes if you would open them and see what Dean is accomplishing.

Do not blame us that you will not see.

[Scott Lee]

22. It proves the questions they ask are merely rhetorical

And not sincere. You can see the best examples of that in a plethora of anti Dean threads which start with a bogus question.

I think it's the Quran that starts many of its passages with "O Ye With Eyes to See!" A lesson from our Islamic friends.

[Scott Lee]

19. That's the Fightin' Doctor!

He's within 5 mil of what his cap would have been with federal matching funds, and a little less than a year to go before election.

This guy's mojo is...spooky. He knows what to do.

[Moderator]

23. dupe

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=42087&mesg_id=42087


DU Moderator