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.
