In Collaboration with the Campaign Finance Institute

Small Donors and Online Giving A STUDY OF DONORS TO THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

The Graduate School of Political Management

In Collaboration with the Campaign Finance Institute

Small Donors and Online Giving A STUDY OF DONORS TO THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS

The Graduate School of Political Management

www.IPDI.org

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was funded by the Joyce Foundation Cardow, Peter Churchill, Kathleen Legg, Zachary and conducted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy Morgan and Ryan Sullivan. Additional assistance & the Internet (IPDI). We are grateful to the Joyce was provided by Andrea Bernal, Emily Browne, Jason Foundation and to Larry Hansen, the foundation’s vice Cheberenchick, Julie Chung, Stephanie Macias, president, for support and encouragement. Megan Norden and Ainsley Stromberg. Peter Churchill The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the supervised the survey mailing. Reform Institute provided supplemental funding, and We offer special thanks to more than three dozen we are grateful for their continued support. political donors from across the country who spoke with IPDI is the premier research and advocacy center for us at length about their motivations for participating in the study and promotion of online politics in a manner the presidential campaign in 2004. that encourages citizen participation and is consistent This report was written by Joseph Graf, Grant with democratic principles. IPDI is non-partisan and Reeher, Michael J. Malbin and Costas Panagopoulos. non-profi t and is housed in the Graduate School of Graf is project director at IPDI; Reeher is associate Political Management at The George Washington professor of political science at the Maxwell School University. of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University; The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) was a partner Malbin is executive director of CFI and professor of in this project. CFI provided access to its database of political science, State University of New York at Albany; political donors and expertise in the fi eld of campaign Panagopoulos is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institution fi nance. CFI is a non-partisan, non-profi t institute for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University. affi liated with The George Washington University that The report was edited by Carol C. Darr, IPDI conducts objective research and education, empanels executive director. The Institute is administered by task forces and makes recommendations for policy The George Washington University Graduate School of change in the fi eld of campaign fi nance. Political Management. F. Christopher Arterton is dean This project benefi ted greatly from the advice and of the school. assistance of many individuals. For more information about the Graduate School We especially thank Bob Biersack, Alexandra of Political Management visit www.gwu.edu/~gspm. Cooper, Brendan Glavin, Marlinda Menashe and For more information about the Institute for Politics, Clyde Wilcox. John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Democracy & the Internet visit www.ipdi.org. For more Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, information about the Campaign Finance Institute visit graciously gave this project the names of small donors www.cfi nst.org. his researchers had compiled. Hal Malchow and Larry Published March 2006. Hayes offered comments on early drafts. Designed by On Deck Communication Studio LLC Research assistance was provided by Lindsay of Alexandria, Virginia. (www.ondeckstudio.com) Baldwin, Julie Barko Germany, Chris Brooks, Lanny

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | PAGE i www.IPDI.org

PAGE ii | PREFACE | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

PREFACE

For the past fi ve years the American public has the number of people who gave small contributions to witnessed a revolution in the way political campaigns political campaigns. Just as widespread participation at are conducted in the United States. Over the course the ballot box is considered healthy for our democracy, of just three presidential election cycles we at the so has popular widespread participation in fundraising Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet come to be seen as important. Contributions from small have seen sweeping changes in how campaigns are donors connect each donor to political life and reduce organized, campaign messages communicated and the appearance of elected offi cials being beholden to a money raised. The Institute’s charter rests on the belief few wealthy donors. that these changes can promote citizen involvement in But no one knew whether the number of small the democratic process and greater accountability of donors would increase substantially and whether the our elected leaders. Our research agenda is dedicated people who gave small contributions or who gave to learning how best to stimulate and strengthen these money over the Internet would be different in important possibilities. ways from the major donors whose contributions have In March 2002 the Congress passed and the dominated presidential campaigns of the recent past. president signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign This project was prompted by a desire to understand Reform Act, commonly known as BCRA or “McCain- these small donors and Internet donors. Our intent was Feingold” for its primary sponsors, Sens. John McCain to gather data on presidential donors in 2004 and then and Russ Feingold. This landmark campaign fi nance to refl ect on what online fundraising and BCRA might legislation was passed after years of political wrangling mean for the future. The full effects of these changes and was only reluctantly signed by President Bush. in political campaigning and campaign fi nance law are BCRA tried to set limits on contributions to the national only beginning to become apparent. political parties. Those new limits created incentives We consider our research part of an ongoing for party leaders and candidates to fi nd new sources of conversation about money and politics, and we money within the restrictions of the law. welcome comments and opportunities for discussion Heading into the election of 2004, it was widely hoped through our Web site (www.ipdi.org). that the Internet would foster a signifi cant increase in

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PAGE iv | TABLE OF CONTENTS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ...... i

Preface ...... iii

Executive Summary ...... 1

Introduction ...... 3

Methodology ...... 7

Small and Large Donors ...... 11

The Dynamics of Political Giving: Online and Offl ine ...... 17

Donor Motivations ...... 25

Online Behavior ...... 29

Political Involvement ...... 31

Attitudes and Opinions ...... 35

First-Time Donors ...... 39

Conclusion ...... 43

Appendices ...... 45

Sources ...... 51

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PAGE vi | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 2004 election was a watershed in presidential crush of small donors may have introduced a polarizing campaign fundraising under a landmark new regulatory element into American politics. Conventional wisdom regime. The Campaign Finance Reform Act (BCRA),1 held that small donors and new donors were more signed by President Bush in 2002, doubled how much angry and extremist than other donors. We did not fi nd individual donors could contribute to federal candidates that to be the case. but ended soft money contributions. The electorate • At a time of polarized politics in America, small was sharply divided over President George W. Bush donors and new donors were no more extreme and a war deeply unpopular with a substantial portion than other donors. The donor pool, as a whole, of the voters. And the Internet continued its emergence is fairly polarized. Donors tend to congregate at as a vehicle for political campaigns to inform, organize the ends of the political spectrum, whereas most and raise money. of the general public congregates in the middle. The convergence of these events led to a surge Nonetheless, small donors are no more extreme in political donors in the 2004 campaign, a dramatic in their opinions than large donors and no more broadening of the donor base to encompass hundreds likely than large donors to express animosity of thousands of Americans who had never donated toward the opposing candidate. before, and an accompanying increase in the number • While there was a surge in new donors in the of people donating money online. No one knew what 2004 campaign, there was a surge in old donors the results of these changes and the surge in political as well, or donors who had given sometime in giving would herald for this election. We believe that the past. The 2004 campaign motivated many 2004 saw some important changes, facilitated in key people to donate for the fi rst time, but not in a respects by the Internet, that suggest a democratizing proportion greater than in past elections. Lots of trend in political fundraising – but at the same time the old donors returned. changes were not earthshattering. On the whole, we’re • There is a surprising amount of fl uidity in the left cautiously optimistic that these changes represent donor pool. Almost one-quarter of the small a positive development that can grow in future election donors and 15 percent of donors who gave $500 cycles. or more were fi rst-time donors. An additional To study the 2004 donors, the Institute for Politics, 39 percent said they gave only some of the Democracy & the Internet together with the Campaign time. For future candidates and fundraisers, this Finance Institute conducted the Small Donors Survey. introduces a greater level of unpredictability and In the fall and winter of 2005 researchers carried out opportunity than we might have predicted in the a wide-ranging national survey and dozens of personal past. interviews with presidential donors. More than 1,500 donors completed surveys, including large numbers of donors who contributed small amounts of money and Researchers have known for years that large large numbers of donors who gave online. This report donors (generally defi ned as those who gave $200 offers a fi rst picture of these groups of political donors, or more) come from a socioeconomic elite. They are of which we know very little – people who contribute much wealthier and more highly educated than typical small amounts of money to political campaigns, usually Americans. However, it has been unclear who made $100 or less (small donors); people who donate online up the pool of donors who gave smaller amounts of (online donors); and people giving for the fi rst time in money. We found that: 2004 (fi rst-time donors). • Donors who gave smaller amounts of money The project addresses the speculation that the fall somewhere between large donors and the general public. Small donors look more like middle class Americans in terms of their 1 BCRA is the general acronym for Bipartisan Campaign Reform education and household income, although Act of 2002.

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donors still are higher in both respects. • Finally, online donors were the most infl uential • While the popular image of political campaigns and activist of donors. They were more likely to often focuses on youth, political donors in say they will return and be politically active in general are middle aged and older and small 2008. donors are no different. Less than 10 percent of In these ways, the Internet has helped level the donors who gave less than $100 to a candidate playing fi eld between large donors and small donors. or campaign in 2004 were under age 35. Large Online political activism diminishes the tremendous donors are typically older. Hardly anyone under fundraising advantage enjoyed by long-term, large age 35 gives $500 or more. donors who move in social circles of donors close to The Internet has transformed how political the campaign and lobby on behalf of their candidate. campaigns communicate with their supporters. In The Internet has helped small, less experienced donors 2004 we found the Internet has become a tool to broaden their reach, and hence their infl uence with organize and extend the infl uence of political activists. others. The result has been an increase in grassroots organizing Finally, as we expected, the motivation for many via e-mail, house parties and online fundraising. donations in 2004 was donor discontent. Rather than • In the 2004 presidential election, nearly all young giving money to support their candidate, many donors donors gave online – more than 80 percent of gave money to oppose the other. This was especially those 18 to 34. While most donors are older, the true for Democratic donors. trend is clear. Online fundraising will be central • Of donors who gave more than $500 in 2004, to the future of campaign fundraising. 80 percent of Kerry donors and 50 percent of • Unsolicited campaign contributions have Bush donors contributed because “the opponent increased. Almost half of small online donors was unacceptable.” contacted the campaign fi rst. They did not get a • Kerry donors offered less strong support for letter or phone call asking for money, but instead Kerry than Bush donors offered the president. sought out their candidate, usually online, in For many, he was the only alternative to a order to show their support. president they oppose. • People online are more likely to be asked to The Small Donors Survey sheds new light on political donate money, and this sort of social pressure donors in America, especially small and online donors. is critical to get people to donate. It is pressure While small donors are still wealthier and more highly that large donors encounter much more often educated than average Americans, the surge in small – a large donor is more likely to have a friend or donors has created a donor pool more representative colleague ask them to give money to a political of the American electorate. The fi ndings also re-focus candidate. attention on the ability of the Internet to empower • People online are more likely to be politically political activists online. The Internet has helped level active. They are more likely to ask others to the playing fi eld between large donors, who have support their candidate, and more likely to ask enormous resources to help them engage in politics, and others to donate money to a candidate. small donors, who now have greater communication tools and resources to make their voices heard. • A quarter of all donors reported they attended a political house party — evidence of the surge Our data suggest that increasing numbers of small in grassroots organizing. Disproportionate donors are not a polarizing infl uence, pushing politics numbers of online donors and fi rst-time donors and politicians to ends of the political spectrum. On attended house parties or Meetup.com events. the contrary, we found reason to be optimistic about A quarter of donors who attended a Meetup changes in campaign funding for the years ahead. said it helped motivate them to give their fi rst contribution.

PAGE 2 | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

INTRODUCTION

No other nation spends as much money as the Dean’s campaign was remarkable for the community United States in the election of its political leaders, of supporters fostered online who funded the campaign and in no other nation is campaign fundraising and provided its early energy. The support, particularly so conspicuous or so embedded in political life. his dramatic lead in early fundraising, made him Fundraising is an overriding concern for candidates the front-runner and put him in the spotlight of the and elected offi cials, and it takes up more and more of national press corps. Other candidates had discovered their time. It has become increasingly sophisticated, the potential of raising money online in 2000 – John professionalized and successful. Fundraising success is McCain raised $2.2 million in the week after the New considered a prime indicator of a candidate’s viability, Hampshire primary2 – but this was only a precursor and monitoring the money has become a staple of to 2004. Dean raised more money online than any political journalism. And for millions of Americans, candidate before him, and raised a greater proportion contributing money to a candidate or political cause of his total campaign funds from donors giving $200 connects them to candidates and other supporters in a or less than any of the 2004 candidates except Dennis simple act of political expression. Kucinich. Dean also raised more money than any other The presidential campaign of 2004 was a Democratic candidate by the end of 2003, something watershed moment in political fundraising because of that typically assures a candidate of the nomination. the convergence of a new regulatory regime, a bitterly The other Democratic candidates relied on donors fought campaign and closely divided electorate, and the who contributed $1,000 or more, which is the more increasing sophistication of Internet technology. The traditional early fundraising path for presidential election was the fi rst test of the Bipartisan Campaign primary candidates. Reform Act (BCRA), which passed in 2002. BCRA Dean’s campaign collapsed after the Iowa caucuses, removed a huge source of funding for federal campaigns but the surge of small donors was not confi ned to his – soft money – while doubling the limits of hard money campaign, which in itself is unusual. Third party or individual contributions to $2,000 per candidate.1 The outsider candidates have often relied on small donors. rancor of the 2004 election seemed a continuation of the John Anderson in 1980, Pat Robertson in 1988, Pat very close and bitter election in 2000, compounded by Buchanan and Jerry Brown in 1992 and Gary Bauer in a controversial war and a sitting president about whom 2000 all were successful appealing to small donors. opinion was deeply polarized. National advertising by Ronald Reagan also relied heavily on small donors in all independent advocacy organizations, so-called “527s,” three of his presidential campaigns. What was unusual only added to the intensity. Finally, the election was for 2004 was that after Howard Dean dropped out of another step in the emergence of the Internet as a the race, both major party candidates shifted their own vehicle for political campaigns to inform, organize and fundraising efforts toward small donors. By the end of raise money. More money was raised online than ever the campaign, John Kerry had raised 37 percent of his before and Howard Dean became the fi rst presidential total contributions from donors who gave $200 or less candidate to center his early efforts and cement his and President Bush had raised 31 percent. In contrast, early support online. in the 2000 election, Al Gore raised 20 percent and

1 BCRA limited donors to federal candidates in 2004 to $2,000 per candidate in the primary and general elections, for a total of $4,000 per candidate. (Major party presidential candidates who accept public funding for the general election may not ac- cept private contributions to their general election campaigns.) 2 John Mintz, “McCain Camp Enjoys a Big Net Advantage,” The The maximum aggregate amount that an individual could con- Washington Post, 9 February 2000. More generally on McCain’s tribute to all party committees, candidates and PACs combined Internet-based fundraising in 2000, see Steve Davis, Larry Elin, was $95,000 for the 2004 election cycle. The limits for the 2006 and Grant Reeher, Click on Democracy: The Internet’s Power to cycle are $2,100 for contributions to candidates and a combined Change Political Apathy into Civic Action (Boulder, Colo.: Westview aggregate limit of $101,400. Press, 2002).

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | INTRODUCTION | PAGE 3 www.IPDI.org

Figure 1 George Bush 16 percent from small donors.3 The Kerry campaign was ultimately able to raise Percentage of 2004 enough money to compete with President Bush, who is a formidable fundraiser. Bush raised $96 million in 2000 and presidential campaign Total contributions in contributions was widely expected before the campaign to raise $150 to amounts less than $200 from $200 million in 2004 – an estimate he easily surpassed. individuals The Bush campaign raised $257 million in contributions from individuals and $270 million in all. Nonetheless, the George W. $256m Bush 31% Kerry campaign was largely able to close the funding gap. Kerry raised $216 million in contributions from individuals John Kerry 37% $215m and $235 million in all. Kerry was also able to raise about a third of his contributions online, whereas Bush raised much Howard 60% $51m 4 Dean less online. This was due to Kerry’s need to raise money later in the campaign and to the fundraising strategies of John 14% $22m both campaigns. Edwards While there was a surge of giving from small donors in Wesley 31% $17m 2004, much of that money was raised late in the campaign. Clark Most of the early money came from large donors, and early money is critical. It buys advertising, enhances Richard 13% $14m Gephardt the perception of viability and attracts more money and support. The press sees early fundraising success as an Joe 9% $14m indicator of a winning campaign. In 2003, a year before Lieberman the election and months before the Democratic nominee was determined, contributions of $1,000 or more made Dennis 70% $8m Kucinich up 66 percent of the individual contributions to the major candidates.5 The percentage of contributions from donors Bob $4m Graham 9% who gave $200 or less steadily increased through the summer of 2004, peaking in May for President Bush (when Carol 65 percent of his contributions came from those who gave Mosley 24% $532k $200 or less) and June for John Kerry (47 percent). By the Braun end of the campaign, Kerry had raised $80 million and Bush $79 million in individual contributions of less than Al $496k Sharpton 13% $200. Except for Bush’s $96 million total in 2000, this was more than any candidate had ever raised in total for SOURCE: CAMPAIGN FINANCE INSTITUTE any previous primary campaign. However, the great bulk of small donations to both leading candidates ($72 million of Kerry’s and $52 million of Bush’s) were made after Kerry had wrapped up the Democratic nomination March 2. The Figure 2 campaigns of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich were exceptional because each raised more than half of their Percentage of individual early money from small donors, and for Dean’s campaign contributions to presidential the amount was substantial. Nonetheless, large donors nominees in amounts less than $200 generally dominated the early campaign in 2004. A huge amount of soft money was removed from the election with the advent of BCRA, and this money was primarily from very large donors. Some no doubt ended up

% 37 3 Michael J. Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons 31% from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004,” Election Law Jour- nal 5, no. 1 (2006). Percentages are the proportion of total contribu- tions from individuals (excluding money from self-fi nancing, parties, 20% PACs or federal funding). 16% 4 Paula Dwyer et al., The Amazing Money Machine: Defying Doomsayers, the Dems - by Some Measures - Are Outraising the Republicans [Online magazine] (Business Week online, 2 August 2004 [cited 7 February 2006]); available from www.businessweek.com, Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomina- 2000 2004 tion Contest of 2004.” 5 Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financing Presidential NOTE: Percentages are the proportion of individual contributions. Nominations, “So the Voters May Choose: Reviving the Presidential Matching Fund System,” (Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Insti- SOURCE: CAMPAIGN FINANCE INSTITUTE tute, 2005).

PAGE 4 | INTRODUCTION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org with the newly energized 527 organizations, such as each. In the 2004 presidential campaign contributions America Coming Together, the Media Fund, Progress of less than $200 accounted for $206 million. If we for America, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Moveon. assume that the average under-$200 donor gave org. But most of these organizations were funded by $75 in 2004, a bit more than in 2000, that would a relatively small number of donors, and the money mean there were about 2.8 million small donors. If the they collected in 2004 for federal campaigning did average donor gave as much as $100 that would still not match the amount of soft money in 2000. By one suggest there were more than two million such donors. estimate, even taking into account all the additional Either way, it marks a huge increase over 2000 – at money contributed to 527s, more than $300 million in least a tripling and maybe more than a quadrupling in soft money contributed in the 2000 campaign did not the number of small donors. Combining the small with reappear in 2004.6 the large donors would mean that somewhere between Large donors extend their infl uence by bundling, or 1.1 and 1.5 percent of the adult population gave to a the practice of one person soliciting donations from presidential candidate in 2004, compared to about 0.4 others, usually friends and acquaintances. Bundling percent of the adult population in 2000. As in 2000, surged in 2000 (especially with the Bush campaign) although the vast majority of the donors were small and continued apace in 2004. The practice makes donors, the bulk of the money came from large donors. the campaign indebted to individuals who each may Both numbers grew, but the more dramatic growth in be responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars participation came from the pool of small donors.9 in campaign funds. President Bush raised at least $76 The amount of money raised in the 2004 election million, or 26 percent of his primary campaign budget, broke nearly every record. The presidential campaigns from 327 “Pioneers” who raised at least $100,000 and raised more than $600 million in donations and the 221 “Rangers” who raised at least $200,000. John national political parties raised another $1.2 billion, all Kerry raised at least $42 million, or nearly 17 percent of of it in hard money. (Soft money contributions were his primary campaign budget, from 226 “Vice Chairs” banned under BCRA.) On top of that was $1.2 billion who raised at least $100,000 and 298 “Co-Chairs” raised by House and Senate candidates and another who raised at least $50,000.7 $400 million raised and spent through federally active The number of people who gave $200 or more to “527” organizations.10 presidential campaigns (and hence are itemized on So why did more people give in 2004 than ever reports to the FEC) has grown steadily over the last before? Any consideration of the 2004 presidential 20 years, but it remains only a tiny minority of adults. election has to begin with the partisan divide in the Contributing money to politics is a form of political electorate, the acrimony of the presidential campaigns participation undertaken by precious few Americans. and the polarized attitudes toward President Bush, According to the Campaign Finance Institute, there especially framed in terms of the War in Iraq and were only 223,000 discrete donors who gave $200 or national security. It was an extraordinary campaign more to a major party presidential candidate in 2000 in this respect. We certainly found some donors and 475,000 such donors in 2004. This means that motivated by a dislike for John Kerry, but the hostility presidential donors of $200 or more amounted to only was more prevalent among those opposed to President one-tenth of one percent of the adult population in Bush. This anger helps explain how the Democratic 2000 and two-tenths of one percent in 2004.8 National Committee and John Kerry were essentially But the dramatic growth story for 2004 came in the able to close the funding gap that has historically number of small donors. We know less about the number existed between the parties. Coupled with this was the of small donors than about large donors because the greater availability of Internet access and information campaigns and parties are not required to release that online that made it possible for donors to seek out data. However, we do have enough information to make candidate Web sites at their convenience. It was easier reasonable estimates. We know that in 2000, when for motivated donors to give. In addition, the campaigns data from all candidates were available, that there were 625,000 donors who gave less than $200 and that 9 For 2000 data, Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financ- these donors gave the candidates an average of $60 ing Presidential Nominations, “Participation, Competition, En- gagement: Reviving and Improving Public Funding for Presidential Nomination Politics,” (Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Insti- tute, 2003). For 2004 data, Michael J. Malbin, “A Public Funding 6 Steve Weissman and Ruth Hassan, “BCRA and the 527 Groups,” System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Cam- Contest of 2004,” in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and paign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lan- Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming)). ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, (forthcoming)). 7 Public Citizen, “The Importance of Bundlers to the Bush & Kerry 10 Federal Election Commission, 2004 Presidential Campaign Fi- Campaigns: Post-Election Summary of Findings,” (Washington, nancial Activity Summarized [Online report] (3 February 2005 D.C.: Public Citizen, 2004). [cited 7 November 2005]); available from www.fec.gov/press/ 8 These estimates vary from other public estimates which may press2004, Federal Election Commission, Congressional Candi- count some donors more than once, calculate number of dona- dates Spend $1.16 Billion During 2003-2004 [Online report] (Fed- tions rather than number of donors, include small donors of $200 eral Election Commission, 9 June 2005 [cited 6 February 2006]); or less, or include contributions to the parties along with the di- available from www.fec.gov/press/press2005, Weissman and rect contributions to candidates being counted here. Hassan, “BCRA and the 527 Groups.”

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How many people actively promoted online giving. Online fundraising was cheaper for the campaigns and the new phenomenon contribute to attracted media coverage. Finally, professional political fundraisers have continued to hone sophisticated tactics political parties or such as micro-targeting and immediate online response. candidates? Defi ning “small donors” and why they are We know how many people gave $200 or important more to federal campaigns, but not how many gave less than that. Campaigns are not required The term “small donors” means different things to to report that information. different people, and this has only confused the discussion surrounding them. In the context of the presidential Public opinion surveys regularly ask whether campaign “small donors” most often identifi es those someone contributed money to a political people who gave less than $200 to a single candidate. candidate or party, but the data are hard to When donors give $200 or more campaigns are required interpret because of differences in question to report their names and other personal information to the wording and because people often exaggerate FEC, so data on these donors are publicly available.11 The their reports of political participation. Giving $200 cutoff is a distinction made by Congress in an effort money to parties or candidates is almost to defi ne some reasonable threshold for disclosure, but it certainly “overreported” by survey respondents, is not based on a belief that someone who gives slightly but it is unclear by how much. more than $200 thinks differently than someone who About 12 percent of adult Americans gives slightly less. Campaign representatives, in contrast, responding to the National Election Studies often talk about “small donors” as anyone who gives less survey said they made a campaign contribution than $1,000 or $2,000. Some fundraising professionals to a candidate or party (at the federal, state or defi ne small donors as those who give small amounts in local level) in 2004. The Pew Research Center each contribution, even if the contributions add up to a for the People and the Press estimated 15 large total. Party fundraisers, who can collect $25,000 percent of adults donated money “in support from a donor, talk about $2,000 donors as “small.” This of candidates” in the 2004 election, although was especially true before BCRA. When soft money was respondents may view donations to many unlimited it seemed that anyone giving “only” $1,000 was different groups to be “in support of candidates.” a small donor. Political journalists appear to identify donors A George Washington University Battleground by how the donors defi ne themselves, so one news story poll conducted in October 2005, almost a year might describe a small donor as someone who gave $1,000 after the election, found that 28 percent said and in another story it’s someone who gave $25.12 The they had given money to a candidate or party.1 amount of money that defi nes a “small donor” depends on These estimates are almost certainly high. whom you ask. Ten percent of the adult population is more than What is consistent, however, is the view that small 20 million donors. We suspect that a closer donors are good for the political process. On one side estimate would be between fi ve and 10 percent are arguments made about the supposedly corrupting of adults gave money to a federal candidate or infl uence of large contributions. On the other side are campaign (but not necessarily the presidential a set of affi rmative arguments about the importance of campaign) in 2004. civic engagement. Getting more people to give even a little money is seen as healthy for the political process. More small donors indicate a broad and active electorate. Donations tie donors to the campaign, giving them a stake in the process and increasing the likelihood of their participating in other ways. Our survey probes these affi rmative arguments with questions about other forms of participation by small donors and Internet donors.

1 National Election Studies, The NES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior [Web site] (University of Michigan, Center for Political Studies, 1995-2000 [cited 26 Sep- tember 2005]); available from www.umich.edu/~nes/ nesguide/nesguide.htm. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Voters Liked Campaign 2004, but Too Much ‘Mud-Slinging’ [Online report] (The Pew Research 11 Some data on donors who gave less than $200 are available from a Center for the People and the Press, 11 November 2004 few campaigns that choose to report this information to the FEC and 2004 [cited 20 October 2005]); available from people- campaigns seeking matching funds during the presidential primaries. press.org/reports/. George Washington University Bat- 12 See, for example, Paul Farhi, “Small Donors Become Big Political Force: tleground Poll, GWU Battleground 2005 (XXVIII) [Online Both Major Political Parties See Surge in Contributors,” The Washington report] (25 October 2005 [cited 15 December 2005]); Post, 3 May 2004, Charles Pope, “Campaign 2004: Small Donors Beef available from www.tarrance.com/battleground.html. up Political Coffers,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October 2004.

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METHODOLOGY

The goal of this project was to study people who gave campaigns, and who comprise the vast majority of small donations to the presidential primary candidates presidential donors. in the 2004 election and, in particular, people who Most federal candidates do not give to the FEC gave online or who gave for the fi rst time. Like all social the names of donors who contribute less than $200, research, what we know about our subject – political although they certainly could. However, presidential donors – is shaped by the available data. In this case, candidates who wish to obtain matching campaign campaign fi nance law has greatly infl uenced how we funds from the government are required to submit the study political donors and what we know about them. same information about any contribution they wish to The Federal Election Commission (FEC) monitors have matched, including small donors. The government campaign fi nancing and enforces campaign fi nance will match up to the fi rst $250 of each contribution, laws. Federal candidates must collect the names and and the total government funding is, of course, capped. addresses of anyone who contributes $50 or more To receive these matching funds in 2004, candidates and must report to the FEC the names and personal must have agreed to limit their spending to about $50 information of anyone who donates $200 or more to million in the primaries and $75 million in the general a federal candidate during an election (either a primary election. or general election).1 The FEC makes that information Six Democratic candidates and independent public on its Web site (www.fec.gov). Computerized candidate Ralph Nader fi led for matching funds and databases and the Internet have made this information provided to the FEC some names of donors, most of much more easily accessible, and FEC reports have whom gave less than $200.2 President George W. become a staple of political news coverage. Researchers Bush, John Kerry, Howard Dean and Carol Moseley can obtain the names and addresses of these publicly Braun did not ask for matching funds. For Bush, Kerry reported donors (anyone who gave $200 or more) and and Dean, this was because they did not wish to be attempt to contact them for study. Most prior donor bound by the spending limits. This wholesale rejection research is therefore about these donors. of public funding by the major candidates follows upon The Small Donors Project obtained its list of donors George W. Bush’s rejection in 2000, which in turn was who gave $200 or more from the Campaign Finance partly a reaction to Steve Forbes’s decision to do so Institute (CFI), which was a partner in this project. CFI in 1996.3 Moseley Braun did not raise enough money cleaned and sorted the FEC data and maintains its own to qualify. The Rev. Al Sharpton submitted names but database of donors to federal campaigns. This list was was eventually denied eligibility for matching funds. a random sample of everyone who gave $200 or more It is from the lists of matching funds donors that we to a presidential candidate anytime during the 2004 drew part of our sample of small donors. Many of campaign. these matching funds donors gave to more than one We know less about other groups of political donors candidate. For example, early small donors to John because it is more diffi cult to identify and contact Edwards often went on to contribute additional money them. For example, we know less about donors to state to John Kerry. This list of names from the matching campaigns because so many of these elections take fund fi les, therefore, includes people who were not place. Surveying each of the states every two years only donors to these seven candidates. It is, however, would be a daunting task. Likewise, we know little about primarily a Democratic list. the donors to the “527” advocacy organizations that played such a visible role in the 2004 campaign. And unfortunately, past survey research has had little to say 2 Lyndon H. LaRouche also received $1.4 million in matching funds. about people who gave less than $200 to presidential 3 John C. Green and Nathan S. Bigelow, “The 2000 Presidential Nominations: The Costs of Innovation,” in Financing the 2000 Elec- tion, ed. David B. Magleby (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institu- 1 State campaigns are, of course, monitored by the states them- tion Press, 2001), Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: selves. Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.”

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To get beyond the matching fund fi les, we to Edwards early in the campaign, but later gave $500 approached representatives from the Dean, Kerry and to John Kerry.) This sample of small donors, while not Bush campaigns immediately after the election and strictly representative, is refl ective of the donor pool requested some names of small donors to survey for in general. It also includes a large number of donors to this project. We received encouraging responses from the John Kerry and Howard Dean campaigns. This is two campaigns, and a fi rm commitment from one because many donors made contributions to multiple campaign to participate. Unfortunately, after several candidates. So although the Kerry campaign did not months of negotiations all three campaigns eventually provide a list of small donors, 39 percent of the small refused to provide even a limited sample of names of donors we surveyed made a donation to Kerry. their small donors. The Small Donors Survey was conducted by mail However, during the 2004 campaign the Bush/ and online from July 1 to November 30, 2005. About Cheney re-election Web site posted the names of all 5,860 people were sampled. The response rate after its campaign donors as part of an effort to offer greater bad addresses were removed was 27 percent, or 1,581 transparency to the campaign. The campaign also did completed surveys. Of those, 935 were from our lists of the same thing in the 2000 election.4 The effort was small donors and 646 were from the FEC lists of donors both praised for its openness and criticized as a ploy who gave $200 or more. (A more detailed description to emphasize small donor support and play up the of the methodology is in Appendix A.) grassroots aspects of the campaign. The information The focus of this report is on several groups that we was posted online in such a way that the total dataset know little about – small donors, fi rst-time donors and could not be downloaded or analyzed, so it was of little online donors, who are really appearing for the fi rst time immediate use to journalists or researchers. It was not as a major factor in a presidential election. We generally possible to sort the information easily, although a few try to confi ne our analysis to these groups. We are less media outlets tried.5 This online feature was available interested in partisan differences, for example, or in throughout the campaign and removed immediately aspects about large donors in general. Nonetheless, after the election. The Kerry and Dean campaigns as we shall see, partisan differences were important in made no similar effort. Despite the unwieldy nature several analyses, and we note these differences when of the Bush Web site data, researchers at the Ray C. they arise. But for the most part, we focus on small, Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of fi rst-time and online donors. While we mention some Akron downloaded lists of small donors from the Bush overall tendencies apparent in our sample of large campaign and made available to the Small Donors donors, such as the increase in the number of female Project about 1,200 names. donors, stronger support of these observations awaits Our sample therefore consists of (1) a random further research. sample of all presidential donors who gave $200 Of course, the small donor cutoff of $200 is an or more and (2) samples randomly drawn from the arbitrary one, established only by FEC guidelines. seven campaigns that applied for matching funds (six There is no evidence that $150 donors are different Democratic candidates and Ralph Nader) supplemented from $250 donors (other than the $100). We do not with a sample of small donors from the Bush/Cheney know that they have different motives to donate. On Web site. This sample of donors is disproportionately the other hand, we are confi dent that people who give Democratic because more names were available to the maximum contribution of $2,000 differ in many sample. While thousands of names of Democratic ways from donors who give much less. We do not small donors were available from the FEC, fewer names accept the $200 cutoff as anything other than a line of Republican donors were available from the list culled chosen largely for convenience. It seems to us that the from the Bush/Cheney Web site. We try to take this person who gives $50 to a candidate fi ve times would into account in our analysis by looking carefully for the have more in common with someone who gives $25 effects of partisanship in the results. In addition, the fi ve times than with a person who wrote a single check name of each small donor was later checked with the for $500. Nonetheless, we adopt the arbitrary cutoff of FEC database to try to make certain the donor did not $200 for some of our analyses mostly because of the give enough to another candidate to become a large way the data are organized, and they are organized that donor. (For example, someone might have given $25 way because of the law. It is important to keep in mind that we sampled 4 Lindsey Arent, Bush Peels Back the Curtain [Online magazine] presidential donors. Donors also contributed to local (Wired News, 10 September 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]); available from www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,21695,00. and state campaigns, which collected $1.8 billion in 6 html, Reuters, Bush’s Campaign Donor List Gets Mixed Response the 2004 election cycle. They contributed to political [Online magazine] (CNET News.com, 10 September 1999 [cited action committees (PACs), individual congressional 2 November 2005]); available from news.com.com/2100-1023- 204335.html. campaigns and congressional committees, such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 5 David Knox, Blue-Collar Donors? Not in This Election Cycle: Uncov- ering Who Really Gives in the 2000 Race for the Presidency [Online article] (Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., Summer 2000 [cited 5 November 2005]); available from www.campaignfi - 6 Institute on Money in State Politics, “State Elections Overview nance.org/tracker/summer00/knox.html. 2004,” (Helena, MT: Institute on Money in State Politics, 2005).

PAGE 8 | METHODOLOGY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org the National Republican Congressional Committee and their counterparts for the senate. There is a lot of crossover giving – people who give to a presidential race also give in state and local races – but our focus for this survey is presidential donors. Using data supplied by the FEC we determined whether a donor gave a total of $100 or less, $101 to $499, or $500 or more in the 2004 election cycle (which includes donations in 2003 and 2004). We determined the $100 and $500 cutoffs because they have been used in past research and because they seem to be logical points at which someone could be clearly considered a “small donor” or “large donor.” The donors who gave $101 to $499 are often removed from the tables for convenience and clarity. Obviously, not everyone will agree on these dividing lines. We also note that some fundraisers prefer the breakdown by average donation, rather than the total of donations. The logic is that someone who gives $50 many times is still a small donor, even if the total of donations adds up to hundreds of dollars. This person would be a highly motivated small donor, not a large donor. Fundraisers argue that this person typically must be asked for money as if he or she were a small donor, usually by direct mail, and for fundraisers, the “ask” is everything. Large donors must be asked for money differently. The waters become even murkier if we consider those who commit to making a donation of $500, and then do so with 10 monthly installments of $50. What to call them? Despite these complications, we believe our cutoffs make sense and capture important differences. We also found that in most cases the pool of donors who gave a total of $100 and the pool of donors who gave an average of $50 looked pretty similar. Most donors whose total contributions were less than $200 gave only once, so their average and total would be the same. We strive throughout our analysis to look closely at differences by characteristics such as partisanship, and in several places analyze data in other ways. Finally, we only highlight differences between subgroups when those differences are statistically signifi cant.

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SMALL AND LARGE DONORS

The fi rst portion of this section describes the ($200 or more) were male.1 This may be changing. demographics — gender, age, education and household We found evidence that the gender gap was smaller income — for donors who gave $200 or more. We in 2004 than in prior elections. Our data suggest that do this in order to compare the 2004 donors with among donors who gave $200 or more the proportion past surveys and to get a better sense of the donor who are women has increased. We also fi nd some pool in general. As we shall see, donors are from an support for this fi nding from an analysis of the names elite socioeconomic group. After that we turn to just of donors collected by the FEC. This study found that the 2004 data gathered for this report and begin to female donors (or at least people who have female compare small donors (those who gave $100 or less) sounding names) increased from 30 percent in 2000 with large donors (those who gave $500 or more). to 36 percent in 2004.2 In our survey, the proportion of females among the $200-or-more donors was an even Donors who Gave $200 or More higher 42 percent. Gender Age Most surveys show that political donors are Media images of political campaigns often focus disproportionately male. But even in estimating on younger supporters, and that was especially true something as simple as gender we must keep in mind in 2004. Howard Dean’s campaign received extensive that donor lists are inaccurate, sometimes deliberately media coverage early in the primaries and its image so. It is common knowledge that some big donors was one of youth. Dean’s emphasis on the Internet only expand their contributions by having spouses or exaggerated this image because online activists tend to children make contributions. In addition, our interviews be younger.3 There were also enormous well-publicized with donors found that many couples donate money as efforts to engage young voters, especially through the a single unit. The donor may be designated as the male Internet. The New Voters Project and a coalition of head of the household because he wrote the check, youth voting groups such as Rock the Vote registered but the donation is really a “couple” or “household” donation. In a few cases donors told us they gave money to a candidate who may not have had their spouse or partner’s support, but larger donations were usually made by joint consent. There are political mixed 1 Information about past donors is taken from Clifford W. Brown, marriages, but it is much more likely that a couple will Jr., Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns (New York: agree on political choices when it comes to giving Cambridge University Press, 1995), Peter L. Francia et al., “Indi- money. vidual Donors in the 1996 Federal Elections,” in Financing the 1996 Election, ed. John C. Green (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), Clyde With these caveats in mind, research going back Wilcox, Jr. Clifford W. Brown, and Lynda W. Powell, “Sex and 20 years has almost always found large donors to be the Political Contributor: The Gender Gap among Contributors disproportionately male. In 1996 and 2000 presidential to Presidential Candidates in 1988,” Political Research Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1993), Clyde Wilcox et al., “With Limits Raised, Who donor surveys showed that 70 percent of large donors Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors,” in Life after Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003). 2 The analysis of donors who gave $200 or more was conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org) of the donor names that could be identifi ed as male or female. About 93 percent of donor names can usually be so identifi ed. The remain- ing names could not be identifi ed or the donor did not give a full fi rst name. In 1992 72 percent were male, in 1996 69 percent were male and in 2000 70 percent were male. 3 Joseph Graf and Carol Darr, “Political Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign,” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, The George Washington Uni- versity, 2004).

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We give as a unit. We’re a team. millions of young voters.4 “ We discuss it back and forth, and But the truth is that young people are still less likely to participate in politics. They are signifi cantly less likely I can’t tell you of any decisions than everyone else to vote. While the percentage of adults aged 18 to 24 who voted rose from 36 percent in 2000 to that we shelved because we 42 percent in 2004, 64 percent of all eligible voters voted in 2004.5 And young people are less likely to give money didn’t agree on it, because we to candidates. Political donors have tended to be older than average, and 2004 was no exception. More than 60 tend to agree. … I don’t give to percent of all 2004 donors were over 50, and that was true in 1996 and 2000 as well. Just 2 percent of donors who conservative causes and my wife gave $200 or more in 2004 were under 35. gives to liberal causes. We have Income friends that I think probably do Not surprisingly, donors who gave at least $200 have much more household income than average Americans, that, but I don’t know how they and in the past eight years the donor pool has become even wealthier. In 1996 about a quarter of these donors can exist under the same roof. claimed more than $250,000 for their yearly household income. That proportion grew to 44 percent in 2000 and They must never talk politics. 35 percent in 2004. Fewer than two percent of all American households in 2004 earned that much.6 — a 61-year-old George Bush” donor from Michigan Education Education is a great dividing line between donors and non-donors. (Likewise, it is a great dividing line between voters and non-voters.) Donors who gave $200 or more are very highly educated, and this fi nding is consistent over the past 20 years. The least educated Americans are hardly represented at all in the donor pool. Only about 3 percent of the donors we surveyed have no more than a high school diploma, and nearly all of them gave less than $100. There are so few donors with just a high school education that Table 1 many prior researchers don’t even bother to consider them. Demographic profi le of presidential Almost half of adult Americans (45 percent) stopped their donors who gave $200 or more, formal education with a high school diploma, but they are largely invisible in the donor pool.7 1996-2004

1996 2000 2004 Small and Large Donors Compared Gender Male 72 % 70 % 58 % Gender Female 28 % 30 % 42 % We now turn to comparing small and large donors, Age which is the focus of our report. Here we compare three 18 to 34 7 % 2 % 2 % groups: donors who gave $100 or less (small donors), 35 to 50 30 % 29 % 29 % donors who gave $101 to $499, and donors who gave $500 51 to 65 25 % 41 % 46 % Over 65 37 % 28 % 23 % Household Income 4 i.e. www.newvotersproject.org, www.rockthevote.com, www.youth- Less than $100,000 43 % 14 % 22 % vote.org $100,000 to $249,000 32 % 42 % 43 % 5 U.S. Census Bureau, Table 1. Reported Rates of Voting and Registration $250,000 to $500,000 24 % 21 % 20 % for the Population 18 Years and over, by Selected Characteristics: Novem- ber 2004. (U.S. Census Bureau, 26 May 2005 [cited 16 September More than $500,000 NA 23 % 15 % 2005]); available from www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releas- Education es/archives/CB05-73Table1.xls. Less than college degree 27 % 19 % 9 % 6 U.S. Census Bureau, Table Hinc-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 College degree 23 % 23 % 21 % or More for Households: 2004 (U.S. Census Bureau, 24 June 2005 Some graduate school NA 12 % 10 % [cited 16 September 2005]); available from pubdb3.census.gov/mac- ro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm. Graduate school 50 % 48 % 60 % n 1,094 1,119 646 7 U.S. Census Bureau, Table 2. Educational Attainment of the Population 15 Years and over, by Single Years of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: NOTE: 1996 data from Francia et al (1999). 2000 data from 2004. (U.S. Census Bureau, 28 March 2005 [cited 16 September Wilcox et al (2003). 2004 data from the Small Donors Project. 2005]); available from www.census.gov/population/socdemo/educa- tion/cps2004/tab02-01.xls.

PAGE 12 | SMALL AND LARGE DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org FROM THE RESEARCH: or more (large donors). As we will see, while small donors Almost half of adult Americans differ from large donors, small donors remain fi rmly part of (45 percent) stopped their the upper and upper middle classes in America. formal education with the high A survey of donors who gave less than $200 in the 2000 school diploma, but they are election found that 76 percent were male, so they refl ected the gender breakdown of the $200-and-over donors at largely invisible in the donor pool. that time.8 We saw above that a greater percentage of large donors in 2004 are women, and it appears that is true among small donors in 2004 too. Women are evenly distributed between small and large donors. We are cautious about Table 2 this observation because our sample of small donors is not completely representative of all small donors in 2004, but Demographic profi le of presidential it adds support for the observation that more women have donors in 2004 entered the donor pool. Donors Donors Donors Age who gave who gave who gave $100 or $101 to $500 or As we saw above, political donors are generally middle less $499 more aged or older. The median age of those who gave $100 or Gender 9 less was 59, which makes them older than everyone else. Male 59 % 59 % 59 % But small donors ($100 or less) are more congregated at Female 41 % 41 % 41 % both the young end (ages 18 to 34) and the old end (over Age 65) of the scale. There is a possible explanation for this. 18 to 34 8 % 6 % 1 % Much of political giving hinges on the ability to give. People 35 to 50 20 % 27 % 29 % between the ages of 35 and 65 are in their prime earning 51 to 65 37 % 42 % 45 % years and simply have more money to contribute. Over 65 34 % 25 % 24 % We fi nd no evidence of the age gap widely reported Median Age 59 56 57 for donors to the Howard Dean campaign, including Household Income Less than $25,000 8 % 3 % 1 % the well-publicized claim that more than a quarter of all $25,001 to $49,999 21 % 5 % 3 % Dean’s donors were under age 30.10 The culture of youth $50,000 to $99,999 38 % 33 % 16 % was a reoccurring theme in the media coverage of the $100,000 to $249,000 28 % 43 % 41 % 11 Dean campaign, particularly early in the campaign, but $250,000 to $500,000 4 % 13 % 21 % the money still came from older donors. The median age More than $500,000 1 % 3 % 19 % of donors who reported that their fi rst campaign donation Education was to Howard Dean was 58, as was the median age of Less than college degree 24 % 13 % 10 % donors who reported that they made any contribution to College degree 25 % 22 % 21 % 12 Dean. Fewer than 5 percent of his donors in our sample Some graduate school 12 % 10 % 10 % were under age 30. Our sample of Dean’s donors is not Graduate school 40 % 54 % 59 % representative (the Dean campaign did not provide a list n847244490

8 Alexandra Cooper and Jason Reifl er, “Small Fish in a Big Pond: Small- Money Donors to the 2000 Presidential Campaigns” (paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, Savannah, Ga., November 2002). 9 Although this difference appears small, the mean difference is statisti- cally signifi cant at p < .01 using one-way ANOVA. I think it’s my age. During the 10 One blog reported that Dean said in early 2004 that one quarter of the June to September 2003 donors were under age 30 (Arianna Huffi ng- “ previous two elections, the fi rst ton, Unelectable, My Ass! [Web site posting] (7 January 2004 [cited December 11 2005]); available from www.alternet.org/story/17512.). time I was only 18 and I wasn’t The following month in his nomination concession speech he said one quarter of all his donors were under age 30. This claim then appeared on several Web sites and in Anya Kamenetz, ‘Deanie Babies’ Grow Up really involved in politics, and [Online magazine] (The Nation, 16 March 2004 [cited 30 September 2005]); available from www.thenation.com/doc/20040329.kame- the second time I was a little netz. It is repeated in Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (New York: Re- more involved, and then this gan Books, 2005). 11 See, for example, Kamenetz, ‘Deanie Babies’ Grow Up, Mark Singer, time I had a full-time job and I “Running on Instinct,” The New Yorker, 12 January 2004, Gary Wolf, “How the Internet Invented Howard Dean,” Wired, January 2004. had money to donate. 12 The number of donors in our sample who said they fi rst gave to Dean was 190; the number who said they gave to Dean at all was 289. Do- — a 24-year-old Ralph Nader nors who gave less than $200 were no younger than those who gave donor from South Carolina.” more.

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Table 3 of small donors), but if his donors were so dramatically Percentage who attend church at younger than those of the other presidential candidates least once a week a greater difference should appear. Dean’s campaign workers may have been young, but it appears his donors 13 Donors who Donors who General were not. gave $100 gave $500 Public or less or more Income Republicans 50 % 43 % 50 % While the donor pool is wealthier than average Democrats 33 % 13 % 35 % Americans, people who gave small contributions are more NOTE: Information about the general public survey appears in likely to look like they come from middle class households. Appendix A. About 30 percent of these small donors report annual household income of $50,000 or less, compared to 4 percent of donors who gave $500 or more. The single most striking difference between large and small donors Table 4 is how much money the household earns, and hence how Percentage who say religion is “very much money is available for giving. Forty percent of those who gave $500 or more have a household income of important” in their lives $250,000 or more. In other demographic traits – such as Donors who Donors who age and education – large and small donors appear closer General together. To put the effects of wealth in another way gave $100 gave $500 Public or less or more – wealthy donors almost always gave a lot, comparatively Republicans 52 % 46 % 66 % speaking, whatever their age, gender or occupation. If we Democrats 26 % 17 % 55 % just look at the donors whose households earn more than NOTE: Information about the general public survey appears in $100,000 a year, the average total amount given is more Appendix A. than $860. Education Small donors are less likely to report the level of education common among large donors, but they are still Table 5 highly educated in comparison to the general population. Occupations About 40 percent of under-$100 donors report they have received a graduate degree, compared to 8 percent Donors who gave Donors who gave 14 $100 or less $500 or more of the general population. About 59 percent of donors Retired 31 % 21 % who gave an average of $500 or more have received a Education 9 % 7 % graduate degree. Legal 4 % 14 % Religious Faith Health 6 % 7 % Religious advocacy groups and religious rhetoric NOTE: Respondents can name more than one category (i.e. “retired teacher”) were prominent during the 2004 presidential campaign, especially in the re-election efforts of President Bush. The Bush campaign used a strategy of enlisting clergy and members of conservative churches, which The New York Times observed “underscores how heavily Mr. Bush is relying on conservative Christians.”15 The president often I do think it was more — a spoke in religious terms on the campaign trail. Kerry was more reluctant to talk about religion, although he certainly “ 16 closer, politically-charged did so, especially before black audiences. Although there was some backlash by religious supporters who did not election — (that prompted me 13 In fact, even Dean’s supporters were no more likely to be younger than other Democratic activists. See Pew Research Center for the to contribute), but I also think People and the Press, The Dean Activists: Their Profi le and Prospects [Online report] (6 April 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]); available that when it comes down to it, from people-press.org/reports. 14 U.S. Census Bureau, Table 2. Educational Attainment of the Population 15 Years and over, by Single Years of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: I had the money. 2004. ([cited). 15 David D. Kirkpatrick, “Bush Appeal to Churches Seeking Help Raises — a 37-year-old Howard Dean and Doubts,” The New York Times, 2 July 2004. ” 16 Jim VandeHei, “Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve; Candidate Usually John Kerry donor from Oregon. Talks About Religion before Black Audiences Only,” The Washington Post, 16 July 2004.

PAGE 14 | SMALL AND LARGE DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org want religion brought into the campaign, Bush drew strong support from religious voters.17 Despite the importance of religion in the campaign, political donors were no more religious than the general FROM THE RESEARCH: public. Donors may even be more secular than non-donors. In this analysis, we examine Democrats and Republicans Despite the importance of religion in separately because of the clear differences in support the the campaign, political donors were parties received from religious voters. Large donors ($500 no more religious than the general or more) are less likely than members of their own party in public. the general public to attend church, and both small ($100 or less) and large donors are less likely to say religion is “very important” in their lives. These differences appear among both Democratic and Republican donors. It is not what we expected for Republican donors when compared to Republicans generally. The support of religious conservatives for conservative politicians has been I’ve only been old enough important, especially in 2000 and 2004, and we expected “ to vote in the last three that donors would report a greater emphasis on religion in their lives, but they did not. Both large and small donors are presidential elections, so this is no more religious than their own partisans in the general public, and this is true for members of both parties. Donors the fi rst year I’ve had a salaried are generally more ideologically extreme, as we shall see below, but they are not more religious. job, a well paying job. The time Occupation before I was in college and time Political donors are disproportionately white collar workers and retired. Most of those who listed an occupation before that in high school. could be classifi ed as white color workers, rather than administrative, trade or other workers.18 About 31 percent — a 30-year-old David Cobb donor of small donors and 21 percent of large donors reported ” from Alabama. (Cobb was the being retired. Green Party presidential candidate.) A handful of occupations are disproportionately represented among political donors, perhaps because so many aspects of their jobs are dependent on legislative funding and decision-making. Most notably, these include educators, health workers and attorneys. Fourteen percent of all donors who gave $500 or more are attorneys or otherwise work in the legal profession. Only about 4 percent of people who gave $100 or less are employed in the legal profession. Summary The donor pool is comprised of a fairly elite socioeconomic group. Donors are more highly educated, older and much wealthier than most Americans. Only 2 percent of donors who gave $200 or more in 2004 were under age 34, and the median age was 57. In most respects, therefore, the donors who gave $200 or more in 2004 look much like the major donors in past elections. The small donors stand somewhere between the large donors and the general public in many respects. Small donors were neither as wealthy nor as highly educated

17 Alan Cooperman, “Pastors Issue Directive in Response to Reelection Tactic,” The Washington Post, 18 August 2004, Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Religion and the Presidential Vote — [On- line report] (6 December 2004 [cited 14 November 2005]); available from people-press.org/commentary. 18 It is possible that people in occupations with lower social status may be less likely to respond to the question.

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as large donors, although they were more so than the general population. These fi ndings are consistent with earlier survey research on the presidential donors of 2000.19 However, the small donors did show a more bipolar age distribution. They were older, on average, than large donors, but there were also eight times as many young people among the small donors as there were in the top group. Finally, despite the religious rhetoric in the campaign, Republican as well as Democratic donors were no more religious than their own co-partisans and in some cases less so.

19 In 2000, 95 percent of the general population and 68 percent of the donors who gave $200 or less had household incomes of less than $100,000, compared to 16 percent of those who gave $200-$999 and 5 percent of the donors who gave the then-maxi- mum amount of $1,000. Small donors were also more likely to be less than 50 years old than large donors, but older than the general population, and they were less highly educated than the large donors, although much more so than the general popula- tion. See Wilcox et al., “With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors.” Data is reported in Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financing Presidential Nominations, “Participation, Competition, Engagement: Reviving and Improving Public Funding for Presidential Nomination Poli- tics,” p. 106.

PAGE 16 | SMALL AND LARGE DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING: ONLINE AND OFFLINE

We now move to an analysis of political giving. the infl uence of the Howard Dean supporters who First we look at how people contributed money, if they migrated to the Kerry campaign after Dean dropped contributed in the past, and whether they intend to out. Dean’s supporters and even supporters of Wesley in the future. Then we look more closely at why they Clark and Dennis Kucinich showed a propensity to contributed. Throughout this section we compare organize and donate online. The Kerry campaign also the differences between small donors ($100 or less) emphasized online donations in the spring of 2004. and large donors ($500 or more). We also examine The Bush campaign simply had less incentive to push the differences between those who used the Internet online contributions later in the campaign because it to make some of their political contributions (online was sitting on a larger bank account for the stretch run donors) and those who did not (offl ine donors). to November. The onus to raise money was on Kerry. In addition to the surge of small donations in the Online donors tended to be younger than other 2004 campaign was a surge of donations online. donors (refl ecting the tendency of young people to Donors could use a credit or debit card to make quickly adopt Internet innovations). In fact, people aged contributions through a Web site, and campaigns 18 to 34 rarely gave offl ine. More than 80 percent of 18- could cut processing and reporting costs and get to 34-year-olds used a credit or debit card through a immediate access to the donation. Collecting small Web site, rather than writing a check, for at least one online contributions has become so easy and effi cient of their donations. Of those aged 35 to 50, 67 percent that campaigns have greater incentives to pursue small made at least one donation online. Only about a quarter donations. Thus these two important developments in of those 65 or older gave online. Again, Democrats in American politics in 2004 – small donors and online all age groups were more likely to give money online. giving – are closely related. The Dynamics of Giving Online and Offl ine Donors Compared Campaign contact: Asking for Contributions Online contributions will be critical for the future of political fundraising. Far more donors gave online in Money is given to those who ask, and fundraisers 2004 than in 2000, when just a fraction of donors gave know that you need to ask often to raise a lot of online, and online giving is particularly attractive to money. Many prospects will say no two or three times young donors.1 In 2004, more than half the Democratic before fi nally becoming a donor. This is not a case of donors and a quarter of the Republican donors made repeated requests wearing down a prospective donor’s at least one of their donations online. There was no resistance, but rather of catching the prospective donor difference in the rate of online giving between small with the right request at the right time. Someone who donors ($100 or less) and large donors ($500 or throws away a letter unopened one day may open one more) – contrary to a widely held assumption that large the next day, perhaps newly motivated to donate after donors did not give online. But more important than watching the news or talking to a colleague at work. the size of the donation was party – the Democrats Generally, the more personal the request the more were more successful funneling their donations to the likely it is to succeed. It’s easier to say no over the phone Internet than were Republicans. This is in part due to than face-to-face, and easiest of all to say no to an online banner advertisement by simply ignoring it. Not surprisingly, big donors are more likely to get a phone call or even a visit from the candidate. They are more 1 Surveys conducted by Gallup and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press during the 2000 campaign found be- coveted and more likely to have personal connections tween 1 and 5 percent of people who went online for political in- with candidates in the fi rst place. formation also made a donation online. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Internet Election News Audience Seeks The Internet has made it easier and cheaper to ask Convenience, Familiar Names [Online report] (3 December 2000 people for money, often in a very engaging way. Contact [cited 12 January 2006]); available from www.people-press.org/ can be highly personalized, so a request can be tied to reports.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | PAGE 17 www.IPDI.org

Table 6 an issue important to the prospective donor. Web sites have Percentage of donors who gave also made it easier to give before being solicited directly by online, by party the campaign. Before the Internet, someone who wished to make an unsolicited donation had to undertake a longer Donors who gave Donors who gave process to get information about a campaign and make a $100 or less $500 or more donation, usually by mail. Donors now don’t need to be Republicans 19 % 31 % Democrats 54 % 64 % nearly so connected to a campaign, but can maintain some distance and relative (if illusory) anonymity. Unsolicited giving has always taken place to some degree, but there is a sense that it increased in the 2000 and 2004 elections.2 Both were campaigns with a great deal of rancor, partisan Table 7 bitterness and, consequently, highly motivated donors. Percentage of donors who gave Unsolicited online giving still presupposes a motivated online, by age group donor, even if the donor need not be so highly motivated as those who sought out the campaign before Internet Donors who gave Donors who gave fundraising. E-mail and online advertising are fairly passive $100 or less $500 or more and serve donors who are looking to give. If direct mail is 18 to 34 87 % 67 % akin to fundraisers chasing donors, then the Internet is akin 35 to 50 65 % 70 % to donors chasing fundraisers. In our interviews with donors, 51 to 65 65 % 59 % many said their fi rst donation was unsolicited and made Over 65 21 % 32 % after they looked for information about candidates online. These donors had been involved in campaigns in the past, had great interest in the 2004 campaign and got involved early. When there were more than a half dozen Democratic Table 8 candidates to choose from, prospective donors would go Percentage who contributed without online looking for a candidate they could support.3 being asked Small donors ($100 or less) who gave online were the most likely to say they gave without being asked. About Donors who gave Donors who gave 46 percent said they made the fi rst donation unsolicited, $100 or less $500 or more without getting a phone call, letter or e-mail asking for Online donors 46 % 39 % money. This refl ects the fact that these small donors were Offl ine donors 24 % 29 % fi rst-time donors, not yet in the campaign database, and highly motivated. For these people, the Internet is an entry to the donor pool. People looking to make a contribution fi rst look online. Most donors, however, gave a donation as a response to a request for money, and those requests came in a fl ood of postal mail, e-mail and phone calls. Some donors were annoyed with the campaigns’ persistence – one dubbed it “interstate stalking” – but respondents’ answers will only embolden campaigns. Almost 20 percent of large donors ($500 or more) said they did not make their fi rst contribution until they had been contacted four or more times. Thirty to 40 percent of all donors require at least two contacts before they fi nally donate. The growing importance of e-mail and media coverage about the online campaign overshadowed the explosion of direct mail fundraising in 2004. The Democratic National Committee sent more direct mail in the fi rst few months of FROM THE RESEARCH: 2004 than the party sent throughout all of the 1990s – and What is remarkable is that among more than 60 million pieces of direct mail were sent during young people aged 18 to 34, very few gave offl ine. More than 80 percent of 2 For some discussion of unsolicited giving in 2000 see Alexandra Coo- 18-to-34-year-olds used a credit or per and Michael Munger, “Big Money, Small Money: Characteristics of debit card through a Web site, rather Donors in the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2000” (paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, Baltimore, Md., than writing a check. March 11-14 2004). 3 The previous three paragraphs are informed by Hal Malchow, Personal interview, 10 February 2006.

PAGE 18 | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org the campaign.4 Postal letters remain the most frequent means of contact with donors. At least 80 percent of donors – regardless of how much they gave – received a letter in the mail from a candidate or campaign. Fewer donors I was interested in Wesley Clark received e-mail. Postal addresses for registered voters are publicly available, and voter registration lists are some of “ before he announced that he the most important lists direct mailers use. Campaigns would run. … As soon as he did, usually cannot get an e-mail address until the donor types it in, so the amount of e-mail a donor received took off after I went on the Internet and found they made an online donation. About 80 percent of online donors – both large donors and small donors – say they got the ‘Draft Wesley Clark’ group, a e-mail appeals asking for more donations.5 couple Clark groups that I joined, For donors who want to keep the campaign at bay – to donate but not get calls or letters at home – e-mail is the and from there they kind of led me means to do that. Online giving clearly resonates with donors, and part of the reason may be because e-mail lets to where I could donate. No one them deal with the campaign on their own terms. They are unwilling to be contacted by other means. We talked to ever asked me to do it. several donors whose reaction to e-mail was unexpected. They said that because e-mail was easily sorted and did — a 58-year-old Wesley Clark donor from Indiana.” not take up physical space it was less likely to be ignored, even though it is so easy to hit the delete button. E-mail sat for days in a “to-do” queue in their mailbox, but postal mail quickly piled up on the kitchen counter and got in the way until someone discarded it unopened. So despite e- mail overload, for some people e-mail was more likely to Table 9 – eventually – get their attention. When we looked at who asked whom to give, large Percentage contacted by letter, donors were slightly more likely than small donors to be e-mail, phone, or in person asked by the campaigns, but they were a lot more likely to be asked by friends and family. This refl ects the social Donors who gave Donors who gave circles within which large donors move. For large donors, $100 or less $500 or more friends and colleagues are donors too, and these friends By letter 80 % 90 % are willing to solicit money for a campaign. After people By e-mail 47 % 63 % By phone 32 % 40 % donated, they likely received a request for more money In person 7 % 16 % from the campaign, regardless of how much they gave. This is pressure that all donors felt, but pressure to contribute NOTE: Respondents could check more than one response. is more effective when it comes from people we know and respect – friends and family. That social pressure was much greater for large donors. Table 10 Online small donors were more likely to be asked to Percentage contacted by e-mail donate again than were offl ine small donors. The Internet has given small donors increased opportunities to connect Donors who gave Donors who gave with others. For large donors, the distinction between online $100 or less $500 or more and offl ine donors had less of an effect. In this way, the Online donors 79 % 82 % Internet has helped close the gap between small and large Offl ine donors 23 % 40 % donors by giving small online donors greater opportunities to connect with others, fi nd political information and perhaps be exposed to the social pressures to move them into the repeat donor class. FROM THE RESEARCH: The Democratic National Committee sent more direct mail in the fi rst few 4 Anthony J. Jr. Corrado, Comments made at The Campaign Finance months of 2004 than the party sent Institute Forum, “The Election After Reform: Money & Politics and the throughout all of the 1990s — more Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.” 14 January 2005, Linda Feldmann, “In Politics, the Rise of Small Donors,” The Christian Science Monitor, 28 than 60 million pieces of direct mail June 2004, Malchow. were sent during the campaign. 5 At the same time, about 30 percent of donors who never donated online also got e-mail from campaigns, so clearly the campaigns have found ways to collect e-mail addresses without contributions.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | PAGE 19 www.IPDI.org

Did anyone ask you The First Donation to contribute to a For obvious reasons, fundraisers are intensely interested in the moments just before someone donates for the fi rst candidate or party? time. Something prompts a person fi nally to say “OK” and write a check or share their credit card number, moving Table 11 from the great majority of people who are non-donors into the fairly select club of donors. This fi rst donation is rarely Percentage asked by “anyone” without prompting, either via direct solicitation, some Donors who gave Donors who gave reference in the media or a personal conversation. $100 or less $500 or more We asked donors to indicate from a list of choices what Online donors 60 % 71 % might have prompted the fi rst donation. The responses Offl ine donors 53 % 75 % show the pervasiveness of direct mail and the media, as well as the social networks of large donors. The most frequently cited response was a letter from the campaign – 46 percent Table 12 of small donors and a third of large donors said that a letter Percentage asked by a campaign in the mail was among the things that prompted their fi rst representative donation. The next most likely responses were the media – seeing something on television news or in print media. Donors who gave Donors who gave Making a donation is often a reaction to something in the $100 or less $500 or more media, and these responses tended to be closely related – Online donors 54 % 61 % donors who saw something in the newspaper, for example, Offl ine donors 49 % 56 % were likely to also have seen something on television. Fewer donors said they gave money because of political advertising on TV, but advertising was focused almost Table 13 exclusively on battleground states, so many people did not Percentage asked by a friend or see much. colleague Large donors were much more likely than small donors to cite a “personal” reason – saying they were encouraged Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or more to donate by a family member, friend or colleague. Online donors 14 % 37 % This personal touch is a powerful incentive and it again Offl ine donors 9 % 40 % refl ects the networks of donors within which large donors circulate. Finally, about 5 percent of respondents said that a Table 14 Meetup event or house party was an incentive for their Percentage asked by a family fi rst donation. Considering that only a tiny fraction of the population attended such events, this shows that these member gatherings were a powerful infl uence on potential donors. Donors who gave Donors who gave A quarter of all the respondents (24 percent) who attended $100 or less $500 or more a Meetup or house party said it prompted them to make Online donors 4 % 6 % their fi rst donation. The political use of Meetups was Offl ine donors 1 % 5 % pioneered by the Dean supporters, so nearly all those who attended were Democrats (89 percent). Seventy percent were online donors. Getting a prospective donor to a social event provides a strong incentive to donate, and that’s true of both large and small donors. A former colleague asked Online donors were much more likely to report that e- mail prompted the fi rst donation, and much less likely to “ cite postal mail. However, e-mail addresses were often me. He was involved in the collected at the time of donation, so this suggests donors don’t remember correctly or that they got involved online campaign and said Clark was prior to donating. Online donors were also more likely than offl ine donors to be motivated by political videos online. Political videos appeared for the fi rst time in the 2004 good on the economy. election, and some received tremendous exposure. “This — a 38-year-old Wesley Clark Land,” a political parody video by JibJab Media, was seen by ” tens of millions of viewers online with only news coverage donor from Massachusetts.

PAGE 20 | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org and word-of-mouth advertising.6 Among small donors large donors, presumably the most committed donors, who gave online, 8 percent said an online video helped say they only give in “some” elections. In other words, prompt a donation, which we consider an impressive a majority of large donors say they are sometimes non- feat for a new medium fl ying under the radar of the donors in presidential elections. When we ask about mass media. less prominent elections at the state and local level, this is even more likely. Even if we just look at very large donors, whose average donation was $1,000 or more Are they regular donors? (154 donors in our sample), just 42 percent said they The donor pool does not appear to be as stable give in “most” presidential elections. year after year as researchers had previously thought. Past surveys of presidential donors suggested a Past scholarship assumed there was a pool of regular more static pool of donors who return to donate in large donors that returned each election to form the nearly every election. However, a recent analysis by foundation of a campaign’s funding. The Small Donors the Campaign Finance Institute of the FEC records of Survey supports other convincing evidence from the all presidential contributors in 1996, 2000 and 2004 2004 election that this may not be so. Large donors shows a more fl uid population of donors in both 2000 are certainly more likely than small donors to give and 2004. Only 31 percent of the donors who gave money in “most” elections, but these differences are the maximum $1,000 contribution to George Bush in not dramatic. More importantly, there is a fair amount 2000 (and 30 percent of his donors of $200 or more) of “churn” in the donor pool – people move in to and returned in 2004 to make any donation at all (of more out of the donor pool, depending on the election. As than the reportable threshold of $200).7 For the other we shall see later, fi rst-time donors make up 23 percent 2000 candidates, the proportion of return donors was of small donors ($100 or less) and 15 percent of large even smaller. To look at the same point from the other donors ($500 or more). But in addition, 39 percent of end: A substantial majority of George Bush’s and John

6 Carol Darr and Julie Barko, “Under the Radar and over the Top: 7 This analysis of FEC disclosure records appears in Malbin, “A Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election,” (Washington, D.C.: Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004). JibJab Nomination Contest of 2004.” Twenty-fi ve percent of Al Gore’s Media (www.jibjab.com) claims the video was seen 80 million donors in 2000 and 21 percent of Bill Bradley’s gave $200 or times. more to a presidential candidate in 2004. Ibid., p. 226.

Table 15 Did any of the following things prompt you to make your fi rst contribution? Donors who gave $100 or less Donors who gave $500 or more

I received a letter in the mail from my candidate or party 46 % 34 %

I received an e-mail from my candidate or party 17 % 18 %

I received a telephone call from my candidate or party 15 % 11 %

I saw something during the presidential debates 22 % 15 %

I saw the candidate in person 12 % 15 %

I saw a political advertisement on TV 10 % 5 %

I saw something in the news on TV 30 % 28 %

I saw something in a newspaper or magazine 30 % 29 %

I saw a political video online 5 % 2 %

A family member, friend, or colleague encouraged me to contribute 6 % 18 %

Someone I knew told me he or she had made a contribution 2 % 6 %

I attended a Meetup.com event or house party 5 % 6 %

NOTE: Respondents could check more than one response.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | PAGE 21 www.IPDI.org

What is Meetup.com? Kerry’s 2004 donors of $200 or more did not give to a presidential candidate in 2000. Meetup.com is a Web site (www.meetup. The importance of this fi nding for our subject is this: com) that connects together people of similar If there is more churning for donors than professional interests by facilitating offl ine gatherings. fundraisers and survey researchers once thought, that People who share hobbies, similar backgrounds means there is more opportunity for the next generation or political ideals can fi nd others with similar of fundraisers and candidates to fi nd new donors. It also interests, share information and organize online, means there is more risk for those who rely on the same old then meet locally. pool to keep giving. The 2004 election has shown us that The service was tremendously popular at politics is more fl uid than we once thought. That, in turn, bringing together activists during the 2004 creates openings for those who can use new techniques, election, particularly supporters of Howard Dean and new means of communications, to persuade new early in the election. During much of the campaign people to come into the system. supporters of Dean made up a large portion of all Meetup members. More than a year after the election the Democracy for America Meetups, an Future giving offshoot of the Dean campaign, still comprised Questions about future behavior can be unreliable. more than 150,000 Meetup members. Most people can’t tell you what they will do this weekend, The company raises revenue from fees paid by let alone next year. Nonetheless, questions about future meeting locations, site advertising and monthly political plans help us assess someone’s intent and their group fees. general interest in politics. The deeply alienated are more likely to say they will opt out of future political involvement. People who were pressed into becoming donors in 2004 – by an interested spouse or a compelling issue, for example – might announce their intention to stay away from politics next time. We asked donors whether they will return to donate or volunteer in 2008, and there is strong sentiment from all donors that they will give again. More than half of over- $500 donors said they “strongly agree” that they will give in 2008. If we ask donors if they would give in 2008 “regardless of who is running,” fewer agree, but we still fi nd a third of big donors committed to return in 2008. While plenty of people are noncommittal, very few say they defi nitely will not give again (less than 5 percent of small donors and 3 percent of large donors). Online donors are more optimistic than offl ine donors that they will return as donors or volunteers in 2008. To clarify this observation we used a regression analysis to look at what predicts whether someone claims that they will donate or volunteer in 2008. Regression allows us to look at how two traits (or variables) are related, for example, the relationship between party support and volunteering in the future, while at the same time holding constant other factors. We found some things we expected: People who had given in the past and who considered themselves strong party supporters plan to donate and volunteer in 2008. We also found that fi rst-time volunteers were less likely to say they will volunteer in 2008. New donors come and go, and fi rst-time donors are often one-time donors.8 Kerry voters were more likely to say they would return in 2008, both as donors and as volunteers. This suggests FROM THE RESEARCH: these donors remain polarized by the election. Quite A quarter (24 percent) of all the unexpectedly, we also found that online donors were more respondents who attended a Meetup likely to say they expect to donate money and volunteer or house party said it prompted them in 2008. In particular, being an online donor strongly to make their fi rst donation.

8 See Appendix A for methodology.

PAGE 22 | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org predicted that someone would wish to return to volunteer. This illustrates how the Internet made it easier for many people to volunteer, and how online involvement was part Table 16 of their deeper involvement in politics. We also believe this is evidence of the empowering nature of online politics and Frequency of giving in its potential to encourage political involvement. presidential elections Finally, the amount of money someone contributed did Donors who gave Donors who gave not have any infl uence on whether they would donate again $100 or less $500 or more in 2008. This is further support of our fi nding above that Never 3 % 1 % the donor pool is more fl uid. Here we see that big donors One election 26 % 22 % were not more likely than small donors to say they would Some elections 44 % 39 % return as donors. Most elections 28 % 38 %

Summary Table 17 Online giving took off in 2004, especially among donors Percentage who plan to donate in who were Democrats. Half the Democratic donors made at 2008 least one contribution online. Online donors tended to be Donors who gave Donors who gave younger, and this suggests that a lot of future giving may $100 or less $500 or more move online, provided that the donor pool is suffi ciently Online donors 47 % 56 % motivated. Offl ine donors 35 % 48 % Almost half of the online donors who gave small contributions and more than one-third who gave large ones gave money without being asked. However, a majority Table 18 of donors give as a response to a prompting like a letter or phone call. Direct mail is still the most important way Percentage who plan to donate in campaigns have to contact potential donors. The impact of 2008, regardless of who is running e-mail on the donation process is tempered by the fact that Donors who gave Donors who gave e-mail addresses are not yet required on voter registration $100 or less $500 or more forms or other sources of mailing lists. Campaigns culled Online donors 25 % 34 % thousands of e-mail addresses from people who visited Offl ine donors 20 % 27 % Web sites, but prospecting for donors is still dominated by direct mail. Small donors get asked to donate by the campaigns less Table 19 often than large donors, but this difference is not great. The Percentage who plan to volunteer in big difference is when it comes to friends, family and work colleagues. Large donors move in social circles with other 2008 donors and those donors ask for money. A large donor is Donors who gave Donors who gave three times as likely as a small donor to say that a friend or $100 or less $500 or more colleague asked them for a donation. Online donors 23 % 21 % Offl ine donors 6 % 12 % Small donors online were surprisingly likely to refer to political videos and Meetup events as motivations for their fi rst donations. Online political videos reached 8 percent of small online donors, without the help of any major media campaign. Meetups reached 8 percent of small online A very important client of my donors, and 24 percent of all those who attended a Meetup “ husband, who was a member said it prompted their fi rst donation. Meetups for small donors and house parties for large donors were powerful of the Republican Party and incentives to donate. If we think about a political donation as the result of a had pledged to raise a specifi c motivated person reacting to a political message at just the right time, the importance of the Internet is in its reach. It amount of money, strongly can provide signifi cant content to large numbers of people suggested that we each make a directly and cheaply. People who go online come in contact with more messages, more often. The Internet helps small contribution. donors connect with these “messages,” whether that means a campaign’s Web site or an e-mail from a friend — a 33-year-old George Bush donor suggesting they make a political contribution. Online small from New York.”

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | PAGE 23 www.IPDI.org

donors are more likely than offl ine small donors to be asked to donate – by campaigns, friends or family members. Online donors are also more likely to say they will return as donors or volunteers, refl ecting how the Internet has made it easier for people to get involved and engaged online.

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DONOR MOTIVATIONS

We now move from questions that asked about Bush donors, especially large donors, were more likely the fi rst donation to questions that address donor than Kerry donors to offer positive comments about motivations overall. What motivates donors to give? Bush and to talk about the president’s character, such Any discussion about why people gave money to the as his integrity, honesty or strength. Iraq, Afghanistan presidential campaigns in 2004 must begin with the and the war on terror were mentioned less often as a observation that this was primarily an election about reason for making a donation. President George W. Bush. Democrats were strongly When respondents were prompted for a negative dissatisfi ed with the incumbent and Republicans response the sentiment was overwhelming. We asked supported him. The most frequent unsolicited whether “the candidate’s opponent is unacceptable” comments in personal interviews with Democrats and about 70 percent of both small and large donors concerned animosity toward President Bush and a said that was a “very important” factor in their decision desire to defeat him in the election. While dislike for to donate. Here we see again that large donors to Kerry John Kerry was also voiced by Republican donors, it were more likely to say that Bush was unacceptable was mentioned less frequently and with less passion (82 percent, compared to 51 percent of large donors to than by those who disliked the president. This partisan Bush). divide in 2004 was an important factor in motivating This difference was smaller when we look just at many people to donate (and to vote). All the other the small donors, and this was true of the open-ended reasons for giving money in 2004 must be considered responses as well. Both sets of small donors said they in this context. found the opposing candidate unacceptable. But about The sentiment is strongest on the Democratic the same number of Bush donors said something side, especially among large donors. When asked an positive about their candidate while this was not true of open-ended question about why they contributed to a the Kerry donors. This adds some understanding to one candidate – with no prompting – 44 percent of large of the broad assumptions about the 2004 campaign – donors to Kerry (who gave $500 or more) and 32 that small donors were particularly driven to contribute percent of small donors to Kerry (who gave $100 or by their animosity toward the opponent. There was less) had something negative to say about the opposing signifi cant donor anger among both small and large candidate or party. The animosity toward the opponent donors, but anger toward the opponent was greatest was less strong among donors to Bush. among large donors to John Kerry. We conducted some simple linear regression to One of the beliefs among fundraisers is that big tease out which traits were most closely associated donors return every year regardless of who is running, with negative feelings toward the opposition. We and are less driven by animosity or partisanship. They combined two survey questions where donors could “invest” in candidates for business and social reasons. express their dislike for the opposing candidate or We looked at the 154 donors in our data whose average party and compared them to other variables. First, donation was at least $1,000. They are not essentially we predictably found that people who considered different from other large donors.2 Our sample is small themselves strong party supporters or ideologues were here, but we cannot support the assumption that very more likely to express negative feelings toward the large donors were different. They expressed just as opposition. Controlling for that variable, we found that much animosity toward the opponent as donors who Kerry voters were indeed signifi cantly more likely to gave less. express negative feelings to the president, reinforcing The next most frequent reasons cited by donors our fi ndings above.1 The open-ended responses also showed that Bush donors liked their candidate more than Kerry donors. 2 Among these $1,000 donors, 22 percent of Bush donors and 38 percent of Kerry donors made negative comments in response to the open-ended question; 60 percent of Bush donors and 76 per- cent of Kerry donors agreed that “the opponent is unacceptable.” 1 See Appendix A for methodology. These percentages are close to the other donor groups.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | PAGE 25 www.IPDI.org Thinking about the were leadership traits and the positions of the candidates, presidential candidate to such as their ideology or their positions on economic, social whom you contributed the and moral issues. More than half of the respondents cite most money, please tell us these factors as very important. Scholars have identifi ed several broad types of motives that infl uence political why you contributed to this activists and donors. The most prevalent are purposive candidate motives, where donors give money because they want to encourage the adoption of policies and candidates with Table 20 which they agree.3 It appears that small donors are more likely to cite purposive motives for their donations: They Percentage who made a negative are more ideological and issue driven. comment about the opposing Donors with material motives try to encourage candidate/party candidates who they think will be benefi cial to their business or fi nancial status. We see this much less frequently. The Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or more sentiment is strongest among donors to President Bush, Bush donors 19 % 15 % who are more likely to give money because “the candidate Kerry donors 32 % 44 % will treat my business fairly.” Finally, donors with solidary motives give because of social benefi ts such as meeting candidates or attending Table 21 political events. This appears even less frequently than Percentage who made a positive other motives – less than 5 percent of donors found these comment about their candidate/ “very important.” Many fundraising professionals have adopted the terms ideologues, investors, and intimates to party make largely the same distinction between donors. Donors who gave Donors who gave Bush donors are more likely to cite the candidate’s $100 or less $500 or more liberalism or conservatism (presumably conservatism). Bush donors 56 % 62 % They are also more likely to say that President Bush was Kerry donors 46 % 35 % strongest for their party and was a good leader, refl ecting the more positive opinions Bush donors offered for their Table 22 candidate. Percentage who mention integrity, Kerry donors are more likely to say they gave because their candidate was likely to win. This response may be due honesty or strength of their to supporters of other candidates rallying around Kerry candidate as it became clear he would become the nominee. Kerry Donors who gave Donors who gave donors were also more likely to donate as a way to infl uence $100 or less $500 or more government policies, which may indicate discontent over Bush donors 26 % 37 % the war in Iraq. Kerry donors 8 % 10 % Finally, we conducted statistical analyses to tease out some of the relationships among donor characteristics, Table 23 motivation and size of donation. Did big donors give money to promote business? Are small donors more interested Percentage who mentioned Iraq or in the candidate’s views? First, we sorted the questions terrorism into three related groups. Most people answered these questions consistently. The fi rst index was comprised of Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or more questions about the candidate’s views – the conservatism/ Bush donors 9 % 13 % liberalism and the economic, social and moral views of the Kerry donors 6 % 12 % candidate. Donors who gave these reasons were considered to have given for purposive motives. We found that strongly partisan people were more likely to cite these reasons. We also found that women and lower income people were a little more likely to cite these reasons than men or higher Though tiny, my contributions income donors, but the driving force here was ideology. “ were meant as a signal of The second index was comprised of questions about the social and business reasons to contribute to a candidate encouragement to that rarest of – enjoying social contacts, attending events, and the belief candidates, an honest man. that the candidate could help your business. These are — a 60-year-old Ralph Nader donor. ” 3 Francia et al., “Individual Donors in the 1996 Federal Elections.” PAGE 26 | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org solidary and material motives We expected that big Bush scored lower on the questions about animosity donors or high-income donors would be more likely to than did either set of small donors, but Kerry’s small cite these reasons, but surprisingly they did not do so. donors were more negative than Bush’s and large Finally, we created a third index of pragmatic donors to Kerry were the most negative of the four questions. People who answered affi rmatively to these groups. questions said they contributed because “the candidate Large donors to Bush scored higher on some of the is likely to win” or is “strongest for my party.” They were material motives (“the candidate will treat my business practical considerations. Here we see that how much fairly”), which might be expected. At the same time, in money someone donated was important, but only the regression analysis income did not predict these slightly so. This suggests that people who give more material responses. So while large donors to President might be more likely to consider whether their money Bush (giving $500 or more) were more likely to report is well spent on a winner, and less likely to invest in a these motives, income alone is not the driving factor. losing cause. But this is not the most important factor We also note the positive reasons donors offered. here; ideology is again most important, and Kerry voters Large donors to President Bush were the most likely were most likely to give these responses. These results of all donors to give a positive comment about the may partly be due to the fact that all of Kerry’s small president. Large donors to John Kerry were the least donors in our sample came from other candidates’ likely to offer a positive comment about their candidate matching fund submission fi les, but we fi nd at least as (and most likely to offer a negative comment about the much instrumental giving among Kerry’s large donors opponent). as among the small ones.4 In general, donors mostly mentioned the candidates’ political views as their reasons for donating money. Summary These are people with purposive motives, or what some fundraisers call ideologues. The social aspects We see little evidence to support the concern that of making a contribution fell far behind, such as giving small donors tend to be more polarized and more money to attend events or meet people. As we saw in negative than large donors. Large donors to George the regression analysis, partisanship drives purposive motives. Kerry donors were more likely to give pragmatic 4 See Appendix A for methodology. responses, especially saying “the candidate is likely to

Table 24 Why Donors Give Donors who gave $100 or less Donors who gave $500 or more Bush Donors Kerry Donors Bush Donors Kerry Donors

The candidate’s opponent is unacceptable 70 % 77 % 51 % 82 %

A candidate’s liberalism/conservatism 70 % 52 % 57 % 50 %

Candidate’s position on economic issues 55 % 61 % 52 % 52 %

Candidate’s views on social/moral issues 71 % 61 % 53 % 57 %

The candidate will treat my business fairly 22 % 10 % 22 % 4 %

I enjoy the friendships and social contacts 2 % 3 % 4 % 1 %

The contribution involved an event I wanted to attend 0 % 2 % 1 % 1 %

The candidate is friendly to my industry or work 5 % 6 % 8 % 3 %

The candidate is likely to win the election 11 % 21 % 8 % 25 %

The candidate is the strongest for my party 46 % 32 % 44 % 29 %

The candidate is a good leader 67 % 49 % 68 % 42 %

As a way to infl uence government policies 32 % 41 % 24 % 35 %

A group I respect supported the candidate 12 % 13 % 9 % 10 %

NOTE: Respondents could check more than one response.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | PAGE 27 www.IPDI.org

win the election.” We see this as mostly the result of the supporters of other Democratic candidates rallying behind Kerry after his nomination became clear. The prevailing wisdom is that large donors give money to help their candidate win or to gain something, usually Although Howard Dean would access to a politician. We fi nd support for the former claim but not the latter. Donors give money to candidates they “ like and with whom they agree. Many donors said they have been my fi rst choice, the contributed because of their positive feelings toward a candidate, especially those who voted for President Bush. largest part of my contributions Coupled with this is the large portion of donors who cite their candidate’s political philosophy and positions on the went to John Kerry because I issues. The more ideologically extreme they were the more likely they were to cite these purposive reasons. strongly wanted President Bush The belief that big donors contribute to a candidate to help their business is somewhat supported here. We could not specifi cally identify business owners in our data, to be defeated. but donors to President Bush cited these reasons. At the same time, donors who earned more money or donated — a 77-year-old John Kerry donor” larger amounts (two things that are closely related) were from Maryland. not more likely to say they contribute money because the candidate would help their business or industry. Certainly in our individual interviews with donors several said they gave money because a business colleague suggested it or because they felt it would help their business, but in these cases the help to the business was coming from the social pressure of other donors, not from the candidate. No one said they gave money hoping that their business would benefi t from legislation. Finally, in our personal interviews we found donors whom we call “pragmatic donors,” and most of these were small donors to also-ran candidates. These donors expressed pragmatic, even politically strategic, motives for making a donation. They were politically savvy and knowledgeable of campaign strategies such as raising money to dissuade a potential opponent or to show a burst of popular support. They liked the candidates they contributed money to, but did not necessarily expect or even want them to win. Their donations were instead aimed at encouraging the My motivating, the whole democratic process or keeping an alternative viewpoint in the campaign. They wanted a candidate they believed “ would lose to nonetheless stay in the race longer. They drive, was to try and identify wanted a candidate’s positions heard, even if they did not fully support those positions. They gave money as a protest a candidate who had the best or out of a sense of duty. These donors do not neatly fi t in to the typical explanations we use to explain why people give likelihood of beating George money to a political candidate.

Bush. — a 52-year-old John Kerry donor” from Ohio.

PAGE 28 | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

ONLINE BEHAVIOR

Donors are wired. Ninety-six percent of large donors that again here.5 and 82 percent of small donors have gone online.1 As Finally, income and the size of the donation did we saw earlier, they have taken to online giving very not infl uence whether someone looked for political quickly, and they use the Internet to obtain political information online. The barriers to entry are very low information. for online information-seeking, and the likelihood of Donors look for political information at online a donor using the Internet for political information is news sites, party Web sites and political blogs. As we not affected by how much money the household earns. might expect, donors are much more likely than typical The Internet levels the playing fi eld a bit between small Internet users to look for political information online, donors and large donors, who otherwise would have and about twice as likely to visit their candidate’s greater resources at their disposal to obtain political Web site.2 All these activities are closely related, so information. We also note that donating online is people who visited a political discussion group, for strongly related to online information gathering. example, were likely to visit a political news site or The 2004 election marked the fi rst national election blog. Interestingly, there is a high correlation between with the widespread use of political e-mail to organize visiting the Web site of your candidate and visiting the supporters and solicit contributions. Both parties sent opponent’s Web site.3 out millions of e-mails to enormous mailing lists. IPDI Small donors and large donors are very similar collected more than 900 different e-mails sent from regarding these online information-seeking activities, the two major campaigns and national parties in the although large donors are a little more active online. last six months of the campaign. (The Institute’s Because of our special interest in online behavior, we database of political e-mails during the election, which again used linear regression to see which factors were is hardly comprehensive, includes state party and 527 related to seeking out information online by visiting organization e-mail, and numbers more than 5,000 political and news Web sites, chat rooms and blogs.4 pieces from the last six months of the campaign.) We created a single index from six questions about This e-mail coverage saturated the donor base – 80 online political activity to create a single measure of percent of donors got political e-mail. In fact, people seeking political information online. Our strategy was who did not donate online often told us – both in the to remove the infl uence of demographic variables and survey and in interviews later – that they did not do so then see whether political party and donation size for fear of giving out personal information and getting mattered. The results were largely as we expected. spammed. Democrats were more likely to get lots of Younger people and Democrats were more likely to e-mail: 45 percent of Democrat large donors and 35 look for political information online, but age was really percent of Democrat small donors got political e-mail the strongest infl uence. This corresponds with what “almost every day.” The same factors were at play here, we know about the campaign. Early Dean supporters including the active online campaigns in the primaries were more likely to be online and later Kerry supporters and the emphasis on online donations by the Kerry were more likely to donate online. IPDI has found that campaign. Republicans were much less likely to get the online political discussion community in 2003 was that much e-mail. dominated by Dean supporters, and we see evidence of Finally, we looked at a political activity that really took off in 2004 – forwarding political e-mail on to others. While forwarding political e-mail is hardly as valuable 1 To determine if respondents had gone online they were asked to the campaign as donating money, it is nonetheless “Do you ever go online to access the Internet or to get e-mail?” 2 Lee Rainie, Michael Cornfi eld, and John Horrigan, “The Internet and Campaign 2004,” (Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & Ameri- can Life Project, The Pew Research Center For The People & the 5 Joseph Graf et al., “Working Paper: Online Political Discussion Press, 2005). Groups in the 2004 Presidential Campaign: A Pilot Study Survey of Discussion Group Leaders,” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for 3 For all donors, Pearson’s correlation coeffi cient of .578, p < .001. Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004), Graf and Darr, “Politi- 4 See Appendix A for methodology. cal Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign.”

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ONLINE BEHAVIOR | PAGE 29 www.IPDI.org

a means by which interested citizens advertised Summary their political positions and sought support for their Obtaining political information is the fi rst step candidates. Campaigns and advocacy groups have toward becoming an engaged citizen: education, media made a special effort to encourage their supporters to use and political knowledge are indicators of political e-mail others. On the campaign Web sites the process involvement. But obtaining information costs time and was automated. money, and researchers for years have argued that Online donors were far more likely to forward e- those with resources – usually the well-off – can spend mail. Among people who received e-mail, 70 percent of the time and money to learn about politics. We suggest online donors admitted they forwarded some along to that the Internet reduces that barrier to entry. Small others. Small donors do so as frequently as large donors. donors can get political information online as readily as If they received e-mail, Democrats and Republicans large donors, and political e-mail is a means for them to were just as likely to forward it. stay informed and easily communicate with others.

Table 25 Online Activity Donors who gave $100 or less Donors who gave $500 or more In the past year, did you...

Go anywhere online to get political information? 63 % 74 %

Visit the Web site of your political party or candidate? 53 % 66 %

Visit the Web site of another party or candidate? 33 % 37 %

Visit a political discussion group or chat room online? 15 % 15 %

Visit a news Web site , such as CNN.com, MSNBC.com, or FoxNews.com? 61 % 70 %

Visit a Web log (or blog) that discusses politics or current events? 33 % 35 %

Table 26 Table 27 Percentage who received political Percentage who have forwarded e-mail “almost every day” political e-mail to someone else

Donors who gave Donors who gave Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or more $100 or less $500 or more Republicans 8 % 15 % Online donors 72 % 70 % Democrats 35 % 45 % Offl ine donors 49 % 44 % NOTE: Of respondents who received e-mail.

PAGE 30 | ONLINE BEHAVIOR | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

Making a political contribution is an act of political very few people are committed to their community to participation, much like planting a political sign in the that degree. front yard or voting, but it is an act that has obvious Having Internet access helps. Small donors with costs. Few Americans are willing to take the effort Internet access are nearly as likely as large donors to to contribute to a campaign, and those who do are score high on the index and be considered infl uentials. engaged in their communities in myriad ways. They Small donors generally fall behind large donors participate locally and are infl uential among their in their rate of volunteering. About 60 percent of friends and neighbors. large donors and 45 percent of small donors have “Infl uentials” is a term adopted by RoperASW to been political volunteers at one time or another. It is describe the small segment of the general public that is interesting, however, that only about 12 percent of large disproportionately infl uential with everyone else.1 The donors are “hard-core” volunteers who show up in defi ning characteristic of infl uentials is their activist most elections. We saw above that most donors are, at orientation toward life, and it can apply to many different times, non-donors. They do not give in every election, things. Infl uentials are the people who recommend to but pick and choose. Here we see that they pick and their friends music, movies or restaurants. They collect choose in their volunteering as well. There are elections information and opinions about the things important where large donors – active in their communities – in their lives, and they communicate that information nonetheless choose to remain on the sidelines. to networks of friends, family and colleagues. Their Donors were actively involved in other ways by infl uence is disproportionate because of the number of asking others to support or give money to a candidate. people they communicate with and the degree to which This activity may be the most important to political others turn to them for advice and information. Prior campaigns. Personal infl uence is powerful. Campaigns research at IPDI has found that political activists online know this, and they focused on enormous grassroots early in the 2004 presidential campaign tended to be efforts in the 2004 election. More than a third of large infl uentials. Nearly 70 percent of these online activists donors said they asked someone else to contribute, qualifi ed as infl uentials, in contrast to 10 percent of the twice as many as the small donors. Donors respond general public.2 to these personal requests. As we saw earlier, large Political donors were much more likely to be donors move in networks of donors who get asked to infl uentials, and large donors were only slightly more make donations and ask others to give. likely than small donors to be infl uentials. Donors are There is an important pattern among small donors far more likely than the general public to be involved in who donate online. Their level of political activity – communication activities (writing letters to politicians soliciting others or attending social events – is much and the media) and political activism (joining parties closer to that of large donors. Being politically active or advocacy groups and attending political functions). online (illustrated by their willingness to donate online) When it comes to some activities that require much closes the gap in political involvement between large more commitment, such as holding offi ce or making and small donors. The Internet makes it easier to ask a speech, donors are more like regular citizens. Only a someone else to support your candidate and to ask for money. Asking someone online is less confrontational 1 Ed Keller and Jon Berry, The Infl uentials (NewYork: The Free Press, than doing so in person, and the campaigns made it 2003). Infl uentials are determined by their responses to 11 ques- easy to solicit friends with boilerplate e-mails, phone tions about political activity. See question 25 of the survey in ap- lists and other tools on their Web sites. We found this pendix B. combination to be particularly intriguing and hopeful 2 Graf and Darr, “Political Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presiden- regarding the question of whether the Internet is tial Campaign.” helping to further democratize electoral politics.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | PAGE 31 www.IPDI.org

House parties and Meetup events were far more important in fundraising than we realized. About forty percent of large donors said they attended a house party for Table 28 a candidate, much more than small donors. Both campaigns used online tools to try to facilitate house parties. While Percentage who tried to convince large donors used house parties, small donors and online someone to support their candidate donors were more drawn to Meetups. Meetup events are advertised and organized online, and Howard Dean Donors who gave Donors who gave supporters were early and enthusiastic users of the $100 or less $500 or more Meetup events (although Meetup.com is nonpartisan). Online donors 77 % 79 % Offl ine donors 57 % 65 % There is evidence from the 2004 campaign that people who attended political Meetups were more likely to donate money, volunteer, and lobby others for their candidate.3 In donor interviews we encountered many donors putting house parties to use in original ways. Parties were Table 29 hosted where money was not solicited or parties became Percentage who solicited money for a regular social events. In one case a donor talked about his candidate from someone else efforts to invite activists on both sides for a conciliatory, nonpartisan political house party immediately after the Donors who gave Donors who gave election. $100 or less $500 or more House parties also may have been an avenue into Online donors 27 % 40 % Offl ine donors 12 % 30 % politics for volunteers. Of all the fi rst-time volunteers, 42 percent reported they attended a Meetup.com political event and 44 percent said they attended a house party.

Table 30 Summary Percentage who attended a The data show that the Internet is leveling the playing Meetup.com event fi eld. Small donors lack the resources and social networks that large donors have, but the Internet in 2004 helped Donors who gave Donors who gave connect them in ways that made up for fewer resources. $100 or less $500 or more Online small donors are just as likely as large donors to Online donors 27 % 19 % try to convince someone to support their candidate, and Offl ine donors 8 % 11 % soliciting others to donate seems particularly spurred by being online. The Internet has made these solicitations easier and removed the advantage enjoyed by those who make large donations and circulate within the donor Table 31 community. Percentage who attended a house Roughly 30 percent of donors who asked others to donate said they asked more than 20 people. These party “activist donors” appear equally among small and large Donors who gave Donors who gave donors. Most people further reported they contacted others $100 or less $500 or more in person or by phone. If we just pull out these “activist Online donors 26 % 40 % donors” who contacted many others, we fi nd that only a Offl ine donors 15 % 37 % quarter of them used e-mail to solicit money from others. This an interesting result: When donors ask others to give money, they did not just blast an e-mail to 20 people they knew. They were very likely to use the phone. This is essentially an example of infl uentials behavior. Contacting others illustrates the communication and activist behavior that infl uentials exhibit. Infl uentials have the network of contacts and are willing to use their

3 Christine B. Williams and Bruce D. Weinberg, “When Online and Of- fl ine Politics ‘Meetup:’ an Examination of the Phenomenon, Presiden- tial Campaign and Its Citizen Activists” (paper presented at the An- nual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Ill., September 2-5 2004).

PAGE 32 | POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org Figure 3 infl uence with others by asking them to donate. Infl uentials Percentage of donors who are three times more likely to ask someone else to donate, are infl uentials and once they do that they are much more likely to contact large numbers of people. We are thus left with a tantalizing question begging further study: Can the Internet create infl uentials, and if so, how, precisely does that happen?4 62% 53%

10% General Donors who Donors who Public gave $100 gave $500 or less or more

Figure 4 Percentage of donors who are infl uentials, by whether they have Internet access or not

66% 69% HAVE HAVE 56% ACCESS ACCESS 44%

Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or less

Table 32 Frequency of volunteering in presidential elections

Donors who gave Donors who gave $100 or less $500 or more Most elections 6 % 12 % Some elections 21 % 32 % One election 18 % 19 % Never 55 % 38 % 4 See Grant Reeher, Larry Elin, and Steve Davis, The Political Life of the Internet (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming).

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | PAGE 33 www.IPDI.org

PAGE 34 | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS

We now turn to donors’ attitudes toward current control for partisanship. Small donors were more likely issues, their partisanship, and their feelings toward than large donors to agree that “government should campaign fi nance. For most of these questions we did enact laws to restrict gay marriage” and “mandatory not expect much difference between online and offl ine death penalty for murder should be the law.” Small donors. For example, we did not believe that online donors and large donors did not differ on the other donors would be more likely to support the death economic and social issues of whether “government penalty than offl ine donors, and they did not. However, should provide health insurance for the uninsured” or we were unsure whether there would be ideological whether “government should spend more money to differences between small donors and large donors. reduce poverty.” Bush donors and Kerry donors still The increase in donors was due in part to a polarizing are far apart on these issues, but within each group, election, but we did not know if small donors were small donors are more socially conservative than large more likely to be strongly partisan. Finally, we certainly donors on these issues. expected differences based on political orientation. Among donors to John Kerry, small donors differed Consequently, much of this analysis centers on from large donors on the statement “taxes should be differences between Democrats and Republicans. cut even if it means reducing public services.” Small Political donors are deeply divided, both on ideology donors to Kerry, while still tending to disagree with and on the issues. Political donors are very likely to that statement, were nonetheless more conservative in identify themselves as “strong” party members or their overall response. Here small donors appear to be “strong” liberals or conservatives, as have political more economically conservative on this issue.2 donors in past elections.1 Whereas most of the Finally, we looked at two questions that address general public clusters in the middle of the political or polarization. Small donors to Bush are no more likely ideological axis, most donors place themselves toward than large donors to Bush to be party ideologues and the poles. place themselves at the end of the party spectrum. This There was a wide gulf between Bush and Kerry was also true of Kerry donors. However, we found that donors on a variety of social issues. In some cases, the small donors were generally more conservative than differences between each side on issues such as gay large donors when we asked them to place themselves marriage were enormous. For example, whereas 74 on an ideological scale from “strong conservative” to percent of the Bush donors agreed with the statement “strong liberal.” Again, Bush donors and Kerry donors “Government should enact laws to restrict gay are far apart on this scale, but within each group, small marriage,” 90 percent of Kerry donors disagreed. donors consider themselves more conservative than We see similar wide disagreement when respondents large donors. were asked questions about reducing taxes, allowing people to invest some Social Security funds, providing health insurance for the uninsured, making the death Alienation and Cynicism penalty mandatory, and spending more to reduce The subtext of American political campaigns is poverty. The differences were greatest on gay marriage, cynicism, and this is no more evident than in online and the smallest divide was for the death penalty. But communications. With Web sites and e-mail the even here, more than 55 percent of Bush donors agreed parties have the capability to communicate rapidly in the death penalty should be mandatory, compared to a personalized manner with their core, the volunteers less than 10 percent of the Kerry donors. and fundraisers who make up the grassroots. Based Large and small donors differed on two social issues. on the thousands of pieces of political e-mail collected Here we analyzed Bush and Kerry donors separately to by IPDI, much of this communication is cynical and negative.

1 Brown, Powell, and Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Con- 2 Mean scores were compared using one-way ANOVA and all rela- tributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns. tionships were signifi cant at p < .05 or better.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | PAGE 35 www.IPDI.org

Figure 5 Political donors were generally fairly negative about Donor attitudes the state of the country, and especially about the state of the economy in the next 10 years. As we would expect, Kerry voters were much more negative than Bush voters, “Taxes should be cut even if it means and especially so when asked whether “the United States reducing public services” is headed in the right direction.” However, more than 30 percent of Bush voters agreed with the statement “I worry % that my children will not have the opportunities I had.” 62 (More than 60 percent of Kerry donors agreed.) We found no signifi cant differences between small and large donors. % We also grouped together a set of questions dealing 34 with alienation from government and politicians. This index included questions about whether politicians do the right thing or whether government is responsive to the 1% 1% people. However, the questions were more broad and less partisan.3 We again fi nd that the supporters of the party Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree out of power are more alienated than Bush supporters, but NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors. this is unrelated to whether the donor was a small or large donor. Small donors are no more or less alienated than large donors.

“People should be able to invest The campaign fi nance system some Social Security funds” The passage of campaign fi nance reform in 2002 was the culmination of a long political fi ght that included years 62% of lobbying and research by public interest organizations, nonprofi t foundations and political groups. In waging 45% this battle, campaign fi nance reform was elevated in the consciousness of many Americans. Many people heard about and came to care about campaign fi nance reform who would not otherwise have paid it much attention. Sen. John McCain in particular emphasized reform in his 2000 1% 2% campaign for the presidency. This heightened awareness showed up in the attitudes donors had toward campaign Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree fi nance reform in research conducted on the 1996 and NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors. 2000 campaigns.4 Prior to the passage of campaign fi nance reform, surveys showed that donors were generally critical of the means by which campaigns were funded. Donors were actually “Government should enact laws to more in favor of reform than the general public, especially restrict gay marriage” banning soft money and limiting campaign spending. Even though there were differences along party lines, there had 73% emerged a fairly strong consensus among donors that reform of some type would be a good thing. % Those feelings of discontent with campaign fi nancing 46 remain more than two years after the passage of BCRA. A majority of donors from both parties thinks that the campaign fi nance system “has problems and needs to be changed” or worse. Sentiment is much stronger among 5% the Democrats. They were much more extreme in their 2% dislike of the campaign fi nance system and their desire for change. More than 40 percent of Democrats who Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree contributed $500 or more gave the most critical response. NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors.

3 See appendix A for the makeup and statistical analyses of indices. 4 Research into donor attitudes toward campaign fi nance reform in 1996 and 2000 includes Peter Francia et al., “Donor Dissent: Congres- sional Contributors Rethink Giving,” Public Perspective, July/August 2000, Wilcox et al., “With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors.”

PAGE 36 | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org Figure 6 Only a small percentage claimed the system was sound Donor attitudes – about 5 percent of Republicans and less than 1 percent of Democrats. These results are similar to the discontent “Government should provide health seen in surveys of presidential donors in 2000. So far, the insurance for the uninsured” campaign fi nance reform passed in 2002 has done little to alter public opinion. This dislike of the campaign fi nance system is the one element of partisan consensus among the issues we polled, although we doubt that the consensus 50% would remain if we asked for proposed solutions. In our discussions with donors it was apparent there is discontent over campaign fi nancing and great suspicion that legislation can fi x it. Respondents tend to lump 15% campaign fi nance together with their own negative feelings 3% % about politics in general, especially gerrymandered political 2 districting, which was mentioned by several donors. (This Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree survey was conducted before the Jack Abramoff scandal NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors. broke into the news.) Donors favor transparency in political giving, but at the same time a few were a little uncomfortable when transparency hit close to home. When they received “Mandatory death penalty for our mailed questionnaire, several donors called to express murder should be the law” surprise that their names were publicly available. When several Web sites posted FEC donor information during the 2004 election, some complaints were made that this was 53% an infringement on personal privacy.5

% Summary 26 Whereas many Americans fall in the middle of the % political spectrum, donors congregate toward the ends. 2% 6 Many consider themselves strong conservatives/liberals or strong Democrats/Republicans. They are also deeply Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree divided along a range of social issues, such as the death NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors. penalty, spending more to alleviate poverty, or restricting gay marriage. Small donors are more conservative than large donors on social issues, and are also more likely to “Government should spend more to place themselves in a more conservative position on an reduce poverty in the U.S.” ideological scale. Democrats are also fairly alienated, although this is may better characterized as discontent at being the party out of power. General alienation toward the political process % is much less prevalent among Republicans. Despite the 47 passage of campaign fi nance reform in 2002, donors remain unhappy with campaign fi nance regulations and are suspicious about reform. 20% 2% 1% Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors.

Table 33 Percentage who say campaign fi nance “is broken and needs to be replaced”

5 Julie Hinds, “Campaign Cash: It’s on the Web: Who Gave What to Donors who gave Donors who gave Whom,” Detroit Free Press, 12 April 2004, Knight Ridder News Service, $100 or less $500 or more “Campaign Donation Site Points to Giver,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Republicans 16 % 14 % 27 April 2004, Leslie Walker, “Political Money, Tracked to Your Door,” The Washington Post, 28 March 2004. Democrats 42 % 45 %

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | PAGE 37 www.IPDI.org

PAGE 38 | FIRST-TIME DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

FIRST-TIME DONORS

The surge in donors in the 2004 campaign was than other donors, controlling for the candidate’s party almost universally praised as one of the few positive (i.e. among Bush donors, fi rst-time donors were no aspects of a negative campaign. As we have discussed more conservative than past donors; and among Kerry elsewhere, there is a consensus that more donors is donors, fi rst-time donors were no more liberal than past a sign of a healthy democracy. However, one concern donors). If we compare just Democrats and Republicans, about this increase in donors was whether they would we fi nd there were more fi rst-time donors among the be more polarized or ideologically extreme. Here we Democrats than Republicans. However, if we compared examined whether these new donors differ from donors just Bush and Kerry donors the difference disappears, who have given in the past. suggesting that the other Democratic candidates drew In trying to estimate how many donors were fi rst- in more new voters. Our observations here are limited time donors we looked at only those donors who gave by the scope of our data, but they nonetheless generally $200 or more in order to compare the data to past fi t assumptions about the campaign. It appears new surveys. Eighteen percent of donors who gave $200 donors were disproportionately independent, but or more said that their donation in the 2004 election perhaps in name only. First-time donors are no different was the fi rst time they had ever given money to a on the liberal-conservative continuum than other candidate or political party. This is roughly similar to donors who give money to the party’s candidates. The estimates from the 2000 election. Data from donors Democrats candidates who did not win the nomination who gave $200 or more in 2000 suggest that roughly attracted new donors to the campaign.2 one in four were fi rst-time givers. In both the 2000 and 2004 elections, donors who gave less than $200 were slightly more likely to say they were contributing to a Demographics presidential candidate for the fi rst time.1 First-time donors were more likely to have been This suggests that the proportion of large donors women, supporting the fi nding that more women who gave for the fi rst time in 2004 was roughly the appeared in our donor survey than past ones. First- same, or maybe even a little less, than in 2000. We time donors are also generally younger and earn less know that the total number of donors at least tripled money than people who have given in the past. While from 2000 to 2004. So while many donors were giving the age difference between fi rst-time donors and other for the fi rst time, many occasional federal donors large donors is signifi cant, fi rst-time donors are hardly who did not give to a presidential candidate in 2000 as young as the popular media would suggest. About were motivated to do so in 2004. As we found earlier, half of new donors are over age 50. Finally, fi rst-time many donors are not habitual donors, so they give in donors are more likely to give online – 74 percent of one election and not in another. The 2004 campaign large donors (over $500) and 60 percent of small motivated many non-donors and these irregular donors donors (under $100) who are giving for the fi rst time to make a contribution in this election cycle. did so online. Our data suggest that there was a higher proportion of fi rst-time donors among people who considered The Dynamics of Giving for First-time themselves independents than those who said they Donors were Democrats or Republicans. About 30 percent of independent donors were fi rst-time donors. First- First-time donors are usually not on the campaign time donors were not any more or less ideological prospecting lists, so not surprisingly they are more likely to say they made a donation without being contacted by the campaign. Almost half of fi rst-time small donors decided to give without any sort of contact from the 1 Unpublished data from a survey reported in Clyde Wilcox et al., “With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors,” in Life after Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lan- 2 All relationships signifi cant at p < .01 using ANOVA with post- ham, Md: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003). hoc comparisons.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | FIRST-TIME DONORS | PAGE 39 www.IPDI.org

campaign. likely to donate because of their attraction to a political As we saw earlier, direct mail still plays a prominent candidate, as opposed to generally wanting to support role in reaching donors, and that’s true for new donors the party or get involved in the political process. When as well. However, new donors are disproportionately ask if they planned to donate in 2008 “regardless of being solicited by e-mail. This means that a lot of e-mail who is running,” they were less likely to agree. addresses were collected by the campaigns before the Only about 10 percent of fi rst-time donors fi rst donation, such as when people submit their e-mail volunteered in a presidential election anytime prior to address in order to get information from the campaign the 2004 election, compared to about 40 percent of or to sign an online petition. everyone else. This suggests these donors are being Nonetheless, small donors are clearly less likely to brought into the political system for the fi rst time, and be asked to give money, especially with the personal it also suggests that for fi rst-time donors the route to requests that are so effective. The donors who have political volunteering lies through donating, and not given before are more likely to get a call from the vice versa. They did not begin as volunteers and then campaign, which we should expect, but they are also graduate into the donor class. more likely to have family, friends or colleagues ask them for money. For example, only 7 percent of fi rst- time small donors reported that a friend asked them to Motivations, Attitudes and Opinions donate, as opposed to 38 percent of large donors who While fi rst-time donors to John Kerry were motivated have given in the past. Regular donors are in a social to donate by animosity toward the president, this was network of donors that provides prompting for the next not signifi cantly more than past donors to Kerry. As we donation. saw in an earlier analysis, being a fi rst-time donor was As we said earlier, an adage of fundraising is that a not a predictor of making a negative comment about fi rst time donor is a one-time donor. That sentiment is the opponent. In other words, animosity motivated all supported here. First-time donors are less likely to say Kerry donors, not just the new ones. Finally, the war they plan to donate or volunteer in 2008. The results in Iraq and terrorism were not signifi cantly more of a also support the thesis that fi rst-time donors were more motivation for fi rst-time Kerry donors.

Table 34 Table 35 Demographic profi le of fi rst-time donors and past donors Percentage of fi rst-time Donors who gave $100 or less Donors who gave $500 or more donors who gave online First-time All others First-time All others Donors who Donors who Gender gave $100 or gave $500 or less more Male 52 % 62 % 46 % 60 % First-time 60 % 74 % Female 48 % 38 % 54 % 40 % donors Age Past donors 40 % 52 %

18 to 34 21 % 4 % 3 % 1 % 35 to 50 26 % 19 % 48 % 26 % 51 to 65 33 % 39 % 38 % 46 % Over 65 20 % 39 % 11 % 26 % Median Age 51 62 50 58 Household Income

Less than $25,000 10 % 7 % 2 % 0 % $25,000 to $49,999 20 % 22 % 2 % 3 % $50,000 to $99,999 38 % 38 % 21 % 15 % $100,000 to $249,000 28 % 29 % 41 % 41 % $250,000 to $500,000 4 % 4 % 16 % 22 % More than $500,000 0 % 1 % 19 % 19 % Education

Less than college degree 27 % 23 % 11 % 10 % College degree 31 % 23 % 30 % 19 % Some graduate school 13 % 11 % 10 % 10 % Graduate school 30 % 42 % 49 % 60 % n 188 635 73 413

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Thinking about the Summary presidential candidate to The polarizing election of 2004 motivated both people whom you contributed the who were giving for the fi rst time and people who had given in most money, please tell us the past. Both new donors and intermittent donors showed up at the party. It appears that the Democratic candidates why you contributed to this – probably Howard Dean especially – attracted more new candidate donors. It makes sense that a variety of candidates would have a broader appeal to the donor pool. First-time donors are younger and a bit less highly Table 36 educated and less wealthy than donors who have given Percentage who made a negative in the past. The pool of fi rst-time donors is almost half women, supporting our observation that more women are comment about the opposing entering the donor pool. First-time donors are more likely candidate/party than past donors to give online. First-time donors Past donors

They are less likely to have been asked to donate, Bush donors 15 % 19 % especially by friends and family members. And as we would Kerry donors 45 % 36 % expect, fi rst-time donors are less committed to returning as donors or volunteers in 2008. Table 37 Percentage who made a positive comment about the opposing candidate/party First-time donors Past donors

Bush donors 53 % 60 % Kerry donors 40 % 41 %

Table 38 Percentage who mention integrity, honesty or strength of their candidate

First-time donors Past donors

Bush donors 21 % 31 % Kerry donors 7 % 9 %

Table 39 Percentage who mentioned Iraq or terrorism First-time donors Past donors

Bush donors 15 % 10 % Kerry donors 11 % 9 %

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PAGE 42 | CONCLUSION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org

CONCLUSION

Researchers have known for years that people who in the same social circles. With a less motivating or make large donations to a federal candidate come from polarizing election in the future, large and small donors a socioeconomic elite. The donor pool is dramatically may not appear again in the same numbers as they wealthier and more highly educated than the general did in 2004, but the fundraisers will continue to fi nd it public. Few people with low incomes or little education easier to prospect for the large donors. give money, and they do not give much. The major As a result, vast segments of the American questions we had were whether the huge upsurge in population are not well represented among political the number of small donors and Internet donors in donors. It is a gross misstatement to say that their 2004 would alter the picture. It turns out that it does money is not welcome – candidates will gladly take – somewhat. their money – but the campaigns have not been looking Small donors stand somewhere between the pool for it (or at least not as hard). The costs are too great for of large donors and the general public. They are still campaign fundraisers with limited resources to spend wealthier and more highly educated than the general much time and money looking for donors among young public, but substantially less so than large donors. Small people and the less educated. Certainly some people donors are also both older and younger. The average from these segments of society donate to presidential age of the small donor is older than the average for campaigns, but the system is stacked against them. large donors, but the small donor pool is made up of They have little chance to meet a candidate and to more old and young voters than the traditional pool of have their picture taken standing alongside. They are $200-plus donors. less likely to get phone calls or letters that provide the We were also concerned whether small donors and critical prompting to donate. And they don’t have the Internet donors would be more polarized than other social pressures from their friends or colleagues. donors. This concern was based on a great deal of The question is whether the campaign of 2004 conventional wisdom about what makes for a successful gives us reason to believe this portrait may change. small donor fundraising appeal through direct mail. Certainly, the 2004 election paints a portrait of the It turns out that the small donors in our sample were presidential donor pool as more fl uid than we used neither angrier nor more polarized than large donors. to believe. Most large donors in 2000 did not return They were no more likely than large donors to express to donate in 2004, and most donors tell us that they animosity toward the opposing candidate. And while are, at times, non-donors. People opt in to and out small donors were a little more conservative on some of politics to a greater degree than we used to think, social issues, they were not extremists. We fi nd no depending on their motivations and dispositions for evidence to support the fear that larger numbers of each election. The number of donors at least tripled small donors in the political process would somehow from 2000 to 2004, but the proportion of new donors be destabilizing or polarizing. was not dramatically higher. That means a lot of old However, despite the infl ux of small donors, the bulk donors re-entered politics in 2004. of campaign money continues to come to candidates in BCRA did permit presidential campaigns to get large contributions raised from a socioeconomic elite. those people who gave $1,000 in the last election to People who typically function in elite circles simply fi nd give $2,000 this time, and the national parties and it easier to become involved personally and it is easier campaign committees did.1 This is hardly broadening for solicitors to fi nd them. Campaign fundraisers are the donor base. But BCRA and the presidential campaign what political scientists call “rational prospectors.” Like laws also led the campaigns and the national parties prospectors for gold, they dig fi rst where they struck gold before. Finding donors costs money, so campaigns “prospect” for donors from the lists of old donors. At 1 Congressional committees were generally not as successful. See the same time, old donors recruit new donors from Anthony Corrado, “Party Finance in the Wake of BCRA: An Over- their friends and colleagues, who look just like they view,” in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lanham, Md.: Row- do. They go to college, have well-paying jobs and meet man & Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming)).

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to expand their donor lists. If they hope to compete in behavior. The broader patterns of the 2004 campaign 2008 and beyond they will have to continue to prospect provided the opportunities for these changes. A lot hard for new donors. of fundraising moved online, direct mail and e-mail The Internet has made it easier to do this. By one appeals grew exponentially and the number of donors estimate, the cost of raising money online is one-fi fth exploded. The Internet then made it easier for small the cost of raising money by telemarketing or direct donors to contact the campaign before being solicited mail. The big money fundraising dinner brings in a lot of (and many did). Internet donors were more likely to money, but it also costs a lot. This decline in the costs forward political e-mail, to ask someone to support of fi nding donors means that it is more worthwhile to their candidate or to ask someone to donate money. solicit money from e-mail lists of names that in the past They more readily would link up with other supporters would have been a much less profi table undertaking. at house parties or Meetups. And people who were (This suggests how valuable good lists of donors can online were much more likely to be infl uential with their be.) friends and neighbors. The Internet was infl uential in leveling the playing We believe the combination of these forces will be fi eld between small donors and large donors. This instrumental in future campaigns, and we hope that is not due to any single online activity, but rather the this can help bring to campaign fundraising a richer integration of online and offl ine methods and the social and political diversity that marks the American infl uence of many different online practices on individual political system at its best.

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APPENDIX A – METHODOLOGY The Small Donors Project also conducted telephone interviews with 31 donors from June 1 to November

30, 2005, although most of the interviews were The Small Donors Survey was conducted from conducted in August. The fi rst four interviews were July 1 to November 30, 2005. Most potential survey used for pretesting the script and contacted through respondents were fi rst sent a letter telling them that acquaintances with a snowball sample, so they did a mailed survey would be forthcoming in a few days. not complete the small donors survey. The remaining Potential respondents then received the survey itself subjects were contacted after they had completed about a week later. A follow-up reminder card was the survey and indicated a willingness to speak with sent to those who did not respond about three weeks a researcher. Subjects were contacted by e-mail and after that. Most of those who did not respond received if they responded affi rmatively an effort was made a second copy of the survey between four and eight to reach them by telephone. Most interviews were weeks after the initial survey was sent. About 6,477 between 10 and 20 minutes long. After the fi rst 20 people were sampled. Of those, 600 surveys were interviews an effort was made to oversample Bush returned due to incorrect addresses and 17 surveys donors in order to obtain a more representative sample were returned because the potential respondent had of donors. died. The total response rate calculated by removing The scope of the interview script generally expanded these surveys from the total mailed was 27 percent. as the interviews progressed. It typically began with In each mailing to respondents we included the basic questions about interest in and involvement with address of a Web site where respondents could take the campaign and then moved to specifi c question about the survey online. Multi-modal surveys have a unique how and why donations to candidates or parties were set of considerations that we needed to take into made. Several variations on the question script probed account. We encouraged respondents to take the the issue of online donations, campaign volunteering, survey online to reduce the labor costs of inputting opinions toward the campaign fi nance system and the data from mailed surveys and the postage costs of online media habits. All the interviews were recorded surveys returned to the institute via business reply mail. and then transcribed, amounting to more than 150 The online survey was identical in look to the mailed pages of transcribed interviews. survey, using identical fonts, sizing and questions per page. One difference was that respondents online were unable to determine the length of the survey, whereas Religious Survey data respondents with the paper copy could immediately tell Data for the religious questions were obtained from it was 16 pages. We received several complaints that the Pew Research Center. The survey concerning church the survey was too long from both online and offl ine attendance was conducted in August 2004 and asked, respondents. Nonetheless, we thought the response “Aside from weddings and funerals, how often do you online was good and we believe giving respondents the attend religious services? More than once a week, once online option improved the overall response rate. In the or twice a month, a few times a year, seldom, or never?” end, 428 valid surveys (or 27 percent of the total) were The question concerning importance of religion in received online and 1,153 were received by mail. one’s life was conducted in July 2005 and asked “How Our sample of donors is composed of a random important would you say religion is in your own life? sample of 3,000 donors who gave more than $200 Very important, fairly important or not very important.”1 (large donors) and 3,480 donors who gave less (small Response categories were collapsed to create logical donors). The names of large donors are publicly comparisons across surveys. available from the FEC and our sample was drawn from a dataset cleaned and maintained by the Campaign Finance Institute. The large donors were selected Open-ended Question Coding at random from all donors to the 2004 presidential Three open-ended survey questions were coded. campaigns who gave $200 or more. The names of The fi rst two questions involved why respondents small donors were drawn from lists of small donors contributed to a candidate and what prompted their submitted to the FEC by the six Democratic candidates fi rst contribution. The fi rst question was “Thinking and one independent candidate who fi led for matching about the presidential candidate you contributed the funds – Wesley Clark, John Edwards, Richard Gephardt, most money to, please tell us why you contributed Joe Lieberman, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich to this candidate?” The second question, which and Ralph Nader. We also obtained a sample of 1,200 immediately followed the fi rst in the questionnaire, was names of small donors to President Bush’s campaign “Was there something specifi c that prompted you to from his Web site. The Bush campaign listed the names make your fi rst contribution, such as an advertisement, of his donors on the campaign Web site and those names were collected and collated by the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron 1 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Religion a and supplied to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & Strength and Weakness for Both Parties [Online report] (30 August 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]); available from www.people- the Internet. press.org/reports.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | APPENDICES | PAGE 45 www.IPDI.org

conversation or news story?” index that measured degree of dislike for the opposing The response categories were not mutually exclusive. candidate against the predictor variables. The Responses were compared to the respondents’ dependent variable was created using two questions voting choice, which we considered their “preferred” at two different points in the survey that both used candidate. The categories were: fi ve-point response categories from “very important” to “not at all important.” The fi rst question was “How 1. Any mention of the opponent or opposition important were these issues in making your choice party, either explicitly or more implicitly, such for president? – I disliked the other candidate” and as “the opposing party” or “the opposition.” the second was “How important were the following 2. Any negative mention of the opponent or factors in your decision to make a contribution to a opposition party. This requires any mention presidential candidate? – The candidate’s opponent such as #1 above, plus any indicator that the was unacceptable.” reference is negative or derogatory. 3. Any mention of the preferred candidate or party. Predicting future donating and volunteering 4. Any positive mention of the preferred candidate For this analysis two variables were individually or party. regressed against the predictor variables mentioned 5. Any mention of the War in Iraq. This would above. The variables were responses on a fi ve-point include the terms Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly or war on Terrorism. disagree” to the statements “I plan to donate to the campaign in the 2008 presidential election” and “I plan 6. Any mention of the following positive values to volunteer for a campaign in the 2008 presidential of the preferred candidate or party: integrity, election.” values, honesty or strength. Two coders coded responses and a subset of results from each coder were re-coded a second time by a third Predicting donor motives coder. Those results were then compared for intercoder Three indices were created from a battery of reliability. questions asking for respondents’ motivations for The third question was simply the open-ended donating. Each question asked respondents to respond responses to the question of “occupation” in the to each statement by marking a fi ve-point scale demographic question battery. Responses were typically ranging from “very important” to “not at all important.” limited to one word or a short phrase. They were Questions in each index were determined using a factor coded into four categories: retired, health professions, analysis that revealed three signifi cant factors. legal professions and education professions. These categories were also not mutually exclusive. Someone who responded “retired teacher,” for example, would The fi rst index of solidary/material motives was have been coded as both retired and in an education comprised of responses to the statements “The profession. candidate is friendly to my industry or work,” “I enjoy the friendships and social contacts,” “The contribution involved an event I wanted to attend” and “The Hierarchical Regression Analyses candidate will treat my business fairly.” Chronbach’s alpha for the index was .74. The second index of For most of the hierarchical regression analysis, purposive motives was comprised of responses to the predictor variables were typically regressed in the statements “candidate’s position on economic the following blocks: (1) age, education, income and a issues,” “candidate’s views on social/moral issues” and dummy variable for gender; (2) strength of ideology, “candidate’s liberalism/conservatism.” Chronbach’s created by combining responses to questions on party alpha for the index was .50. The third index of pragmatic affi liation and conservative-liberal ideology and “folded motives was comprised of responses to the statements over” to make it a strength of ideology scale ranging “the candidate is likely to win” and “the candidate is from zero to six; (3) variable of zero or 1 for John Kerry strongest for my party.” Pearson’s correlation coeffi cient voters; (4) the amount of money the donor contributed; for the two items was .43 (p < .001). (5) variable of zero or 1 for fi rst-time donors; and (6) variable of zero or 1 for online donors. The predictor variables were the same as above. All statistical tables are available online (www.ipdi. org) or from the fi rst author. Cynicism Index We composed an index of an individual’s attitudes Predicting negative comments toward an toward cynicism with frequently used questions that opponent address cynicism and political effi cacy. We began with asking respondents to mark a fi ve-point scale from The analysis was done by regressing a two-question “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” for the following

PAGE 46 | APPENDICES | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET www.IPDI.org six questions. e. Another candidate 1. Politics works for the benefi t of special interests rather than the public good. 3. How important were these issues in making your choice for president? (5-point scale from “very 2. Most politicians are willing to tackle the real important” to “not at all important”) problems facing America. a. Iraq/the war 3. I generally think that politicians try to do the b. Economy/jobs right thing. c. Terrorism/security 4. People like me have no say about what d. Honesty/integrity government does. e. The direction of the country 5. Sometimes politics seems so complex that I f. Strength/leadership don’t understand what’s going on. g. Social Security 6. Elections make government responsive to the h. I liked my candidate views of the people. i. I disliked the other candidate Often these questions are used to identify two concepts, effi cacy and cynicism. However, a factor analysis did 4. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself to be a … (Strong Republican, Independent, Strong not reveal a clear division between the two presumed Democrat) factors, so fi ve items were combined to form a single index we identifi ed as general cynicism, leaving out question #5 above. The remaining questions form a 5. Do you consider yourself to be a member of a third fairly reliable index (Chronbach’s alpha = .77). party? a. No b. The Reform Party c. The Independent Party d. The Green Party APPENDIX B – VERBATIM e. The Constitution Party QUESTION WORDING OF THE f. Another third party SMALL DONORS SURVEY 6. In the 2004 campaign, did any presidential candidates ask you for money? If so, how did they 1. What are your views about the following contact you? Check all that apply. If you were not statements? (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, contacted, just leave blank. (by letter, by phone, by strongly disagree) e-mail, in person) a. Taxes should be cut even if it means reducing a. Carol Moseley Braun public services. b. George W. Bush b. People should be able to invest some Social c. Wesley Clark Security funds. d. Howard Dean c. The United States is generally headed in the e. John Edwards right direction. f. Dick Gephardt d. Government should enact laws to restrict gay g. Bob Graham marriage. h. John Kerry e. Government should provide health insurance i. Dennis Kucinich for the uninsured. j. Joe Lieberman f. Mandatory death penalty for murder should k. Ralph Nader be the law. l. Al Sharpton g. I am worried about the national economy in m. Any others the next 10 years. h. Government should spend more to reduce 7. In the 2004 campaign, did any party organizations poverty in the U.S. ask you for money? Check all that apply. If you were not contacted, just leave blank. (by letter, by phone, by i. I worry that my children will not have the e-mail, in person) opportunities I had. a. Republican National Committee 2. Who did you vote for in the presidential election on b. Democratic National Committee Nov. 2, 2004? c. Republican Senate/House committees d. Democratic Senate/House committees a. I did not vote. b. George W. Bush 8. Generally speaking, how often have you given c. John Kerry money to candidates or political parties? (Never, One d. Ralph Nader election, Some elections, Most elections)

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a. Presidential candidates a. I do not recall b. Senate/House candidates b. No c. State/local candidates c. Yes d. Political parties 14. Think back to when you fi rst gave money to a 9. During the campaign, did anyone personally ask presidential candidate or political party in the 2004 you to give money to a candidate or party, either in election. When was that fi rst contribution? person, by phone or by e-mail? a. I do not recall a. I do not recall b. Prior to Jan. 19, 2004, before any primaries b. No were held c. Yes c. During the primaries, from January to June d. (If yes) Who asked you? Check all that apply. 2004 i. A family member d. During the political conventions and debates, ii. A friend or colleague July to October 2004 iii. A campaign representative e. In the last week or so before the Nov. 2 election 10. Did you ask anyone to give money to a candidate or political party? 15. Thinking about the presidential candidate you a. I do not recall contributed the most money to, please tell us why you b. No contributed to this candidate? (open-ended) c. Yes d. (If yes) About how many people did you ask? 16. Was there something specifi c that prompted i. 1 to 3 people you to make your fi rst contribution, such as an ii. 4 to 9 people advertisement, conversation or news story? (open- iii. 10 to 20 people ended) iv. More than 20 people e. How did you usually contact them? 17. Did any of the following things prompt you to make i. Talked to in person or by phone that fi rst contribution? Check all that apply. ii. Sent a letter or note by postal mail a. I received a letter in the mail from my iii. Sent e-mail candidate or party. b. I received an e-mail from my candidate or 11. How many contributions did you make to the party. following candidates? How much did you give? If you c. I received a telephone call from my candidate did not donate, just leave blank. or party. a. Carol Moseley Braun d. I saw something during the presidential b. George W. Bush debates. c. Wesley Clark e. I saw the candidate in person. d. Howard Dean f. I saw a political advertisement on TV. e. John Edwards g. I saw something in the news on TV. f. Dick Gephardt h. I read something in a newspaper or magazine. g. Bob Graham i. I saw a political video online. h. John Kerry j. A family member, friend or colleague i. Dennis Kucinich encouraged me to contribute. j. Joe Lieberman k. Someone I know told me he or she had made k. Ralph Nader a contribution. l. Al Sharpton l. I attended a Meetup.com event or a house m. Any others ______party.

12. How many contributions did you make to the 18. How much was your fi rst contribution to a following organizations? How much did you give? If campaign in 2004? (open ended) you did not donate, just leave blank. a. Republican National Committee 19. Who did you make that fi rst contribution to? b. Democratic National Committee c. Republican Senate/House Committees 20. How many times were you contacted by a d. Democratic Senate/House Committees campaign or political party (such as by phone or mail) before you made that fi rst contribution? 13. Was the 2004 election the fi rst time you gave a. None. I was not contacted. money to a candidate or political party? b. 1 time

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c. 2 or 3 times organization d. 4 times or more f. Served as an offi cer for some club or organization 21. How many of your contributions were made online g. Signed a petition using a credit card, debit card, or online check? h. Worked for a political party a. All i. Made a speech b. Some j. Written an article for a magazine or c. None newspaper d. (If none) Why not? Check all that apply. k. Written a letter to the editor to a newspaper i. I do not have Internet access. or magazine or called a live radio or TV show ii. I do not pay for things online. to express an opinion iii. I do not want to give out personal l. Been an active member of any group that tries information online. to infl uence public policy or government

22. How important were the following factors in your 26. How much do you agree or disagree with these decision to make a contribution to a presidential statements? (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, candidate? (5-point scale from “very important” to strongly disagree) “not at all important”) a. I plan to donate to a campaign in the 2008 a. The candidate’s liberalism/conservatism presidential election. b. Candidate’s position on economic issues b. I plan to donate to a campaign in the 2008 c. Candidate’s views on social/moral issues presidential election, regardless of who is d. The candidate is likely to win the election running. e. A group I respect supported the candidate c. I plan to volunteer for a campaign in the 2008 f. The candidate’s opponent is unacceptable presidential election. g. The candidate is the strongest for my party d. Politics works for the benefi t of special h. The candidate will treat my business fairly interests rather than the public good. i. The candidate is a good leader e. Most politicians are willing to tackle the real j. As a way to infl uence government policies problems facing America. k. I enjoy the friendships and social contacts f. I generally think that politicians try to do the l. The contribution involved an event I wanted right thing. to attend g. People like me have no say about what m. The candidate is friendly to my industry or government does. work h. Sometimes politics seems so complex that I don’t understand what’s going on. 23. When you think about how political campaigns are i. Elections make government responsive to the paid for, which statement best refl ects your view of views of the people. the campaign fi nance system? a. It is broken and needs to be replaced 27. Do you ever go online to access the Internet or to get e-mail? b. It has problems and needs to be changed c. It has some problems but is basically sound a. No (Skip to the next question.) d. It is all right just the way it is and should not b. Yes be changed c. (If yes) In the past year, did you do any of the e. I do not know following? Check all that apply. i. Go anywhere online to get political 24. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself to be information? a … (Strong Conservative, Neutral, Strong Liberal) ii. Visit the Web site of your political party or candidate? iii. Visit the Web site of another party or 25. Here is a list of things some people do about candidate? government or politics. Please indicate if you have iv. Visit a political discussion group or chat done any of these in the past year. Check all that room online? apply. v. Visit a news Web site, such as CNN. a. Written or called any politician at the state, com, local or national level vi. MSNBC.com or NYTimes.com? b. Attended a political rally, speech, or organized vii. Visit a Web log (or blog) that discusses protest of any kind politics or current events? c. Attended a public meeting on town or school affairs 28. During the election, how often did you receive d. Held or run for political offi ce political e-mail? e. Served on a committee for some local

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a. I did not receive any political e-mail (Skip to 36. Race/ethnicity the next question.) a. White b. Several times a month b. Black c. Several times a week c. Hispanic d. Almost every day d. Asian e. (If you received e-mail) How often did you e. Native American forward political e-mail to someone else? f. Other i. Never ii. Once in awhile 37. State of residence iii. Sometimes iv. Often 38. How often do you attend religious services? 29. If you worked or volunteered for a candidate in a. More than once a week 2004 (such as at fundraisers or rallies), was this the b. Once a week fi rst time you ever did so? c. Several times a month a. No d. Seldom or never b. Yes c. I did not work or volunteer for a candidate. 39. Overall, how important is your religious faith in your life? 30. Including the 2004 campaign, how often have a. Very important you worked or volunteered for candidates (such as b. Important at fundraisers or rallies)? (Never, one election, some c. Somewhat important elections, most elections) d. Not very important a. Presidential candidates e. Not at all important b. Congressional or local candidates 40. What is the highest level of education you 31. In the 2004 campaign did you do the following? have attained? Check all that apply. a. Less than high school a. Watch some of the presidential debates? b. High school diploma b. Try to personally convince someone to c. Some college support your candidate? d. College degree c. Attend a Meetup.com political event? e. Some graduate school d. Attend any sort of house party for a f. Graduate degree candidate? e. Put a political bumper sticker on your car or a 41. What is your marital status? political sign in your yard? a. Married b. Separated 32. Thinking about an average weekday, how much c. Never married time do you spend … (None, Less than 15 minutes, 15- d. Widow/Widower 29 minutes, 30-59 minutes, One hour or more) e. Divorced a. Reading a daily newspaper b. Watching the news on TV 42. Occupation c. Listening to news on the radio d. Reading news on the Internet 43. Annual household income e. Reading magazines a. Less than $25,000 b. $25,000 - $49,999 33. How have you been getting most of your national c. $50,000 - $74,999 and international news? d. $75,000 - $99,999 a. Newspapers e. $100,000 - $149,999 b. Television f. $150,000 - $199,999 c. Radio g. $200,000 - $249,999 d. Internet h. $250,000 - $499,999 e. Magazines i. More than $500,000 f. None of the above

34. Age

35. Gender

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Political Parties See Surge in Contributors.” The Washington SOURCES Post, 3 May 2004, A1.

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Brown, Clifford W., Jr., Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. ———. Congressional Candidates Spend $1.16 Billion During 2003- Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential 2004 [Online report]. Federal Election Commission, 9 June, Nomination Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005 [cited 6 February 2006]. Available from www.fec.gov/ 1995. press/press2005.

Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financing Presidential Feldmann, Linda. “In Politics, the Rise of Small Donors.” The Nominations. “Participation, Competition, Engagement: Christian Science Monitor, 28 June 2004, 1. Reviving and Improving Public Funding for Presidential Francia, Peter, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Wesley Nomination Politics.” Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Joe, Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. “Donor Dissent: Institute, 2003. Congressional Contributors Rethink Giving.” Public Perspective, ———. “So the Voters May Choose: Reviving the Presidential July/August 2000, 29-32. Matching Fund System.” Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Francia, Peter L., Rachel E. Goldberg, John C. Green, Paul S. Institute, 2005. Herrnson, and Clyde Wilcox. “Individual Donors in the 1996 Center for the Digital Future. “Digital Future Project.” USC Federal Elections.” In Financing the 1996 Election, edited by John Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future. C. Green, 127-53. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

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Cooper, Alexandra, and Jason Reifl er. “Small Fish in a Big Pond: Graf, Joseph, Julie Barko, Diana Xiong, and Laetitia Deweirdt. Small-Money Donors to the 2000 Presidential Campaigns.” “Working Paper: Online Political Discussion Groups in the 2004 Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Southern Political Presidential Campaign: A Pilot Study Survey of Discussion Science Association, Savannah, Ga., November 2002. Group Leaders.” Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004. Cooperman, Alan. “Pastors Issue Directive in Response to Reelection Tactic.” The Washington Post, 18 August 2004, 4. Graf, Joseph, and Carol Darr. “Political Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign.” Washington, D.C.: Institute for Corrado, Anthony. “Party Finance in the Wake of BCRA: An Politics, Democracy & the Internet, The George Washington Overview.” In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the University, 2004. Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 19- 37. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming). Green, John C., and Nathan S. Bigelow. “The 2000 Presidential Nominations: The Costs of Innovation.” In Financing the 2000 Corrado, Anthony J. Jr. Comments made at The Campaign Election, edited by David B. Magleby, 49-78. Washington, D.C.: Finance Institute Forum, “The Election After Reform: Money & Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.” 14 January 2005. Hinds, Julie. “Campaign Cash: It’s on the Web: Who Gave What to Whom.” Detroit Free Press, 12 April 2004. Darr, Carol, and Julie Barko. “Under the Radar and over the Top: Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election.” Washington, D.C.: Huffi ngton, Arianna. Unelectable, My Ass! [Web site posting]. 7 Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004. January, 2004 [cited December 11 2005]. Available from www. alternet.org/story/17512. Davis, Steve, Larry Elin, and Grant Reeher. Click on Democracy: The Internet’s Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action. Institute on Money in State Politics. “State Elections Overview Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002. 2004.” Helena, MT: Institute on Money in State Politics, 2005.

Dwyer, Paula, Robert D. Hof, Jim Kerstetter, and Marcia Vickers. Kamenetz, Anya. ‘Deanie Babies’ Grow Up [Online magazine]. The “The Amazing Money Machine: Defying Doomsayers, the Nation, 16 March, 2004 [cited 30 September 2005]. Available Dems - by Some Measures - Are Outraising the Republicans from www.thenation.com/doc/20040329.kamenetz. “[Online magazine]. Business Week online, 2 August, 2004 Keller, Ed, and Jon Berry. The Infl uentials. New York: The Free [cited 7 February 2006]. Available from www.businessweek. Press, 2003. com. Kirkpatrick, David D. “Bush Appeal to Churches Seeking Help Farhi, Paul. “Small Donors Become Big Political Force: Both Major Raises Doubts.” The New York Times, 2 July 2004, 15.

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Knight Ridder News Service. “Campaign Donation Site Points Reuters. Bush’s Campaign Donor List Gets Mixed Response [Online to Giver.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 April 2004, 4E. magazine]. CNET News.com, 10 September, 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]. Available from news.com.com/2100-1023- Knox, David. Blue-Collar Donors? Not in This Election Cycle: 204335.html. Uncovering Who Really Gives in the 2000 Race for the Presidency [Online article]. Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc., Singer, Mark. “Running on Instinct.” The New Yorker, 12 January Summer, 2000 [cited 5 November 2005]. Available from www. 2004. campaignfi nance.org/tracker/summer00/knox.html. Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, Malbin, Michael J. “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. New York: Regan Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.” Books, 2005. In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 219-46. U.S. Census Bureau. Table 1. Reported Rates of Voting and Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, (forthcoming). Registration for the Population 18 Years and over, by Selected Characteristics: November 2004. U.S. Census Bureau, 26 May, ———. “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]. Available from www.census. Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.” Election Law Journal gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/CB05-73Table1. 5, no. 1 (2006): 2-22. xls.

Malchow, Hal. Personal interview, 10 February 2006. ———. Table 2. Educational Attainment of the Population 15 Years and over, by Single Years of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: Mintz, John. “McCain Camp Enjoys a Big Net Advantage.” The 2004. U.S. Census Bureau, 28 March, 2005 [cited 16 September Washington Post, 9 February 2000, A1. 2005]. Available from www.census.gov/population/socdemo/ education/cps2004/tab02-01.xls. National Election Studies. The NES Guide to Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior [Web site]. University of Michigan, Center ———. Table Hinc-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 or More for Political Studies, 1995-2000 [cited 26 September 2005]. for Households: 2004 U.S. Census Bureau, 24 June, 2005 [cited Available from www.umich.edu/~nes/nesguide/nesguide.htm. 16 September 2005]. Available from pubdb3.census.gov/ macro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The Dean Activists: Their Profi le and Prospects [Online report]. 6 April, VandeHei, Jim. “Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve; Candidate 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]. Available from people-press. Usually Talks About Religion before Black Audiences Only.” The org/reports. Washington Post, 16 July 2004, 1.

———. Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience, Walker, Leslie. “Political Money, Tracked to Your Door.” The Familiar Names [Online report]. 3 December, 2000 [cited 12 Washington Post, 28 March 2004, F07. January 2006]. Available from people-press.org/reports. Weissman, Steve, and Ruth Hassan. “BCRA and the 527 ———. Religion a Strength and Weakness for Both Parties [Online Groups.” In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the report]. 30 August, 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]. Available Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, from people-press.org/reports. 79-111. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld (forthcoming).

———. Religion and the Presidential Vote [Online report]. 6 Wilcox, Clyde, Jr. Clifford W. Brown, and Lynda W. Powell. December, 2004 [cited 14 November 2005]. Available from “Sex and the Political Contributor: The Gender Gap among people-press.org/commentary. Contributors to Presidential Candidates in 1988.” Political Research Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1993): 355-69. ———. Voters Liked Campaign 2004, but Too Much ‘Mud-Slinging’ [Online report]. The Pew Research Center for the People and Wilcox, Clyde, Alexandra Cooper, Peter Francia, John C. Green, the Press, 11 November 2004, 2004 [cited 20 October 2005]. Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, Jason Reifl er, Mark J. Rozell, Available from people-press.org/reports/. and Benjamin A. Webster. “With Limits Raised, Who Will Give More? The Impact of BCRA on Individual Donors.” In Life after Pope, Charles. “Campaign 2004: Small Donors Beef up Political Reform: When the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act Meets Politics, Coffers.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October 2004, A1. edited by Michael J. Malbin, 61-79. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Public Citizen. “The Importance of Bundlers to the Bush & Kerry Littlefi eld, 2003. Campaigns: Post-Election Summary of Findings.” Washington, Williams, Christine B., and Bruce D. Weinberg. “When D.C.: Public Citizen, 2004. Online and Offl ine Politics ‘Meetup:’ an Examination of the Rainie, Lee, Michael Cornfi eld, and John Horrigan. “The Internet Phenomenon, Presidential Campaign and Its Citizen Activists.” and Campaign 2004.” Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political American Life Project, The Pew Research Center For The People Science Association, Chicago, Ill., September 2-5 2004. & the Press, 2005. Wolf, Gary. “How the Internet Invented Howard Dean.” Wired, Reeher, Grant, Larry Elin, and Steve Davis. The Political Life of the January 2004. Internet. New York: New York University Press, forthcoming.

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