Yesterday I questioned some of the data in a Washington Post report on campaign financing, saying it didn’t match with how I had read the data in some recent CFI reports. After corresponding with folks at both organizations, it is clear that the error was mine, and not either of these other organizations. I had confused CFI data which lists the number of small donations (donations under $200) for a list of contributions raised from small donors (donors giving less than $200 in the aggregate to the campaign). For example, a donor who gave $150 on three separate occasions during the primary season would not count as a small donor under the Washington Post’s count, because her total donations exceed $200. Yet $450 worth of contributions would count as small donations under the CFI data.
What this means in terms of my draft paper, More Supply More Demand, is that I have overestimated the percentage of money donated by small donors to the Obama campaign as a percentage of total donations. (I am having the draft paper taken down from SSRN and will repost it with the corrected data. I believe the error affects two of the tables.) According to the Post;s data, about 1/4 of the total amounts Obama has raised in the primary and general came from small donors—that’s about $150 million of the roughly $600 million raised. That’s a very high amount of money raised from small donors, but as a percentage of total donationsit apparently is not out of line with some other recent campaigns.
I’m glad to be able to make the correction while the paper is still in draft.