2012 Numbers: Bigger, Badder January

Here's a rule about political fundraising: January is dead. People are feeling the pinch of their Christmas shopping, it's cold, and the political cycle doesn't really heat up for the non-primary-having party until later in the year. All in all, not a great time.

Not this January. This January was bananas. ActBlue sent over $4 million to Democratic candidates and committees this month, a nearly four-fold increase over January 2008. If you recall, in 2008 there was this little, kind of boring contest called the Democratic Presidential Nomination Fight--Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and so on. Still, 2012 is clocking in well ahead of those numbers, as you'll see below:

Number of contributions	87,408
Total raised	$4,021,352.93
Average Contribution size	$46.01
Committees receiving money	1,207

You can't really get a sense of how big January was until you see how it stacks up relative to 2011 and 2008:

	Jan 2008	Jan 2011	Jan 2012	Change
Contributions	11,835	10,120	87,408 (!)	764%
Volume ($)	$1,358,105.87	$636,711.13	$4,021,352.93	532%
Mean Donation	$114.75	$62.92	$46.01	-27%
Committees	535	460	1,207	162%

Here are the five top committees, by number of donors, for January 2012.

Name	Race	Donors	Dollars
Elizabeth Warren	MA-Sen	13,827	$658,329
DCCC	Party Committee	11,906	$332,746
Democracy for America	Organization	10,555	$187,149
Democratic Party of WI	Party Committee	7,400	$152,406
CREDO SuperPAC	SuperPAC	5,845	$133,896

There are a couple of big surprises in the data--the DCCC and the CREDO SuperPac make the leaderboard for the first time and buck expectations by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars with an average donation size under $30. We believe small donors and disclosure are the key to a healthy political system and it looks like folks are coming around.