small donors and online giving - campaign finance institute · small donors and online giving |...

Small Donors and Online GivingA S T U D Y O F D O N O R S T O T H E 2 0 0 4 P R E S I D E N T I A L C A M P A I G N S

Th e G r a d uat e S c h o o l o f P o l i t i c a l M a n a g e m e n t

I n C o l l a b o r at i o n w i t h t h e C a m pa i g n F i n a n c e I n s t i t u t e

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | PAGE i

www.IPDI.org

This project was funded by the Joyce Foundation and conducted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI). We are grateful to the Joyce Foundation and to Larry Hansen, the foundation’s vice president, for support and encouragement. The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Reform Institute provided supplemental funding, and we are grateful for their continued support. IPDI is the premier research and advocacy center for the study and promotion of online politics in a manner that encourages citizen participation and is consistent with democratic principles. IPDI is non-partisan and non-profi t and is housed in the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University. The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) was a partner in this project. CFI provided access to its database of political donors and expertise in the fi eld of campaign fi nance. CFI is a non-partisan, non-profi t institute affi liated with The George Washington University that conducts objective research and education, empanels task forces and makes recommendations for policy change in the fi eld of campaign fi nance. This project benefi ted greatly from the advice and assistance of many individuals. We especially thank Bob Biersack, Alexandra Cooper, Brendan Glavin, Marlinda Menashe and Clyde Wilcox. John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, graciously gave this project the names of small donors his researchers had compiled. Hal Malchow and Larry Hayes offered comments on early drafts. Research assistance was provided by Lindsay Baldwin, Julie Barko Germany, Chris Brooks, Lanny

Cardow, Peter Churchill, Kathleen Legg, Zachary Morgan and Ryan Sullivan. Additional assistance was provided by Andrea Bernal, Emily Browne, Jason Cheberenchick, Julie Chung, Stephanie Macias, Megan Norden and Ainsley Stromberg. Peter Churchill supervised the survey mailing. We offer special thanks to more than three dozen political donors from across the country who spoke with us at length about their motivations for participating in the presidential campaign in 2004. This report was written by Joseph Graf, Grant Reeher, Michael J. Malbin and Costas Panagopoulos. Graf is project director at IPDI; Reeher is associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University; Malbin is executive director of CFI and professor of political science, State University of New York at Albany; Panagopoulos is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University. The report was edited by Carol C. Darr, IPDI executive director. The Institute is administered by The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. F. Christopher Arterton is dean of the school. For more information about the Graduate School of Political Management visit www.gwu.edu/~gspm. For more information about the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet visit www.ipdi.org. For more information about the Campaign Finance Institute visit www.cfi nst.org. Published March 2006. Designed by On Deck Communication Studio LLC of Alexandria, Virginia. (www.ondeckstudio.com)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PAGE ii | PREFACE | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | PREFACE | PAGE iii

www.IPDI.org

PREFACE

For the past fi ve years the American public has witnessed a revolution in the way political campaigns are conducted in the United States. Over the course of just three presidential election cycles we at the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet have seen sweeping changes in how campaigns are organized, campaign messages communicated and money raised. The Institute’s charter rests on the belief that these changes can promote citizen involvement in the democratic process and greater accountability of our elected leaders. Our research agenda is dedicated to learning how best to stimulate and strengthen these possibilities. In March 2002 the Congress passed and the president signed into law the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as BCRA or “McCain-Feingold” for its primary sponsors, Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold. This landmark campaign fi nance legislation was passed after years of political wrangling and was only reluctantly signed by President Bush. BCRA tried to set limits on contributions to the national political parties. Those new limits created incentives for party leaders and candidates to fi nd new sources of money within the restrictions of the law. Heading into the election of 2004, it was widely hoped that the Internet would foster a signifi cant increase in

the number of people who gave small contributions to political campaigns. Just as widespread participation at the ballot box is considered healthy for our democracy, so has popular widespread participation in fundraising come to be seen as important. Contributions from small donors connect each donor to political life and reduce the appearance of elected offi cials being beholden to a few wealthy donors. But no one knew whether the number of small donors would increase substantially and whether the people who gave small contributions or who gave money over the Internet would be different in important ways from the major donors whose contributions have dominated presidential campaigns of the recent past. This project was prompted by a desire to understand these small donors and Internet donors. Our intent was to gather data on presidential donors in 2004 and then to refl ect on what online fundraising and BCRA might mean for the future. The full effects of these changes in political campaigning and campaign fi nance law are only beginning to become apparent. We consider our research part of an ongoing conversation about money and politics, and we welcome comments and opportunities for discussion through our Web site (www.ipdi.org).

PAGE iv | TABLE OF CONTENTS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | TABLE OF CONTENTS | PAGE v

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

PAGE vi | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | PAGE 1

www.IPDI.org

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The 2004 election was a watershed in presidential campaign fundraising under a landmark new regulatory regime. The Campaign Finance Reform Act (BCRA),1 signed by President Bush in 2002, doubled how much individual donors could contribute to federal candidates but ended soft money contributions. The electorate was sharply divided over President George W. Bush and a war deeply unpopular with a substantial portion of the voters. And the Internet continued its emergence as a vehicle for political campaigns to inform, organize and raise money. The convergence of these events led to a surge in political donors in the 2004 campaign, a dramatic broadening of the donor base to encompass hundreds of thousands of Americans who had never donated before, and an accompanying increase in the number of people donating money online. No one knew what the results of these changes and the surge in political giving would herald for this election. We believe that 2004 saw some important changes, facilitated in key respects by the Internet, that suggest a democratizing trend in political fundraising – but at the same time the changes were not earthshattering. On the whole, we’re left cautiously optimistic that these changes represent a positive development that can grow in future election cycles. To study the 2004 donors, the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet together with the Campaign Finance Institute conducted the Small Donors Survey. In the fall and winter of 2005 researchers carried out a wide-ranging national survey and dozens of personal interviews with presidential donors. More than 1,500 donors completed surveys, including large numbers of donors who contributed small amounts of money and large numbers of donors who gave online. This report offers a fi rst picture of these groups of political donors, of which we know very little – people who contribute small amounts of money to political campaigns, usually $100 or less (small donors); people who donate online (online donors); and people giving for the fi rst time in 2004 (fi rst-time donors). The project addresses the speculation that the

1 BCRA is the general acronym for Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.

crush of small donors may have introduced a polarizing element into American politics. Conventional wisdom held that small donors and new donors were more angry and extremist than other donors. We did not fi nd that to be the case.

• At a time of polarized politics in America, small donors and new donors were no more extreme than other donors. The donor pool, as a whole, is fairly polarized. Donors tend to congregate at the ends of the political spectrum, whereas most of the general public congregates in the middle. Nonetheless, small donors are no more extreme in their opinions than large donors and no more likely than large donors to express animosity toward the opposing candidate.

• While there was a surge in new donors in the 2004 campaign, there was a surge in old donors as well, or donors who had given sometime in the past. The 2004 campaign motivated many people to donate for the fi rst time, but not in a proportion greater than in past elections. Lots of old donors returned.

• There is a surprising amount of fl uidity in the donor pool. Almost one-quarter of the small donors and 15 percent of donors who gave $500 or more were fi rst-time donors. An additional 39 percent said they gave only some of the time. For future candidates and fundraisers, this introduces a greater level of unpredictability and opportunity than we might have predicted in the past.

Researchers have known for years that large donors (generally defi ned as those who gave $200 or more) come from a socioeconomic elite. They are much wealthier and more highly educated than typical Americans. However, it has been unclear who made up the pool of donors who gave smaller amounts of money. We found that:

• Donors who gave smaller amounts of money fall somewhere between large donors and the general public. Small donors look more like middle class Americans in terms of their education and household income, although

| EXECUTIVE SUMMARY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

donors still are higher in both respects.• While the popular image of political campaigns

often focuses on youth, political donors in general are middle aged and older and small donors are no different. Less than 10 percent of donors who gave less than $100 to a candidate or campaign in 2004 were under age 35. Large donors are typically older. Hardly anyone under age 35 gives $500 or more.

The Internet has transformed how political campaigns communicate with their supporters. In 2004 we found the Internet has become a tool to organize and extend the infl uence of political activists. The result has been an increase in grassroots organizing via e-mail, house parties and online fundraising.

• In the 2004 presidential election, nearly all young donors gave online – more than 80 percent of those 18 to 34. While most donors are older, the trend is clear. Online fundraising will be central to the future of campaign fundraising.

• Unsolicited campaign contributions have increased. Almost half of small online donors contacted the campaign fi rst. They did not get a letter or phone call asking for money, but instead sought out their candidate, usually online, in order to show their support.

• People online are more likely to be asked to donate money, and this sort of social pressure is critical to get people to donate. It is pressure that large donors encounter much more often – a large donor is more likely to have a friend or colleague ask them to give money to a political candidate.

• People online are more likely to be politically active. They are more likely to ask others to support their candidate, and more likely to ask others to donate money to a candidate.

• A quarter of all donors reported they attended a political house party — evidence of the surge in grassroots organizing. Disproportionate numbers of online donors and fi rst-time donors attended house parties or Meetup.com events. A quarter of donors who attended a Meetup said it helped motivate them to give their fi rst contribution.

• Finally, online donors were the most infl uential and activist of donors. They were more likely to say they will return and be politically active in 2008.

In these ways, the Internet has helped level the playing fi eld between large donors and small donors. Online political activism diminishes the tremendous fundraising advantage enjoyed by long-term, large donors who move in social circles of donors close to the campaign and lobby on behalf of their candidate. The Internet has helped small, less experienced donors broaden their reach, and hence their infl uence with others. Finally, as we expected, the motivation for many donations in 2004 was donor discontent. Rather than giving money to support their candidate, many donors gave money to oppose the other. This was especially true for Democratic donors.

• Of donors who gave more than $500 in 2004, 80 percent of Kerry donors and 50 percent of Bush donors contributed because “the opponent was unacceptable.”

• Kerry donors offered less strong support for Kerry than Bush donors offered the president. For many, he was the only alternative to a president they oppose.

The Small Donors Survey sheds new light on political donors in America, especially small and online donors. While small donors are still wealthier and more highly educated than average Americans, the surge in small donors has created a donor pool more representative of the American electorate. The fi ndings also re-focus attention on the ability of the Internet to empower political activists online. The Internet has helped level the playing fi eld between large donors, who have enormous resources to help them engage in politics, and small donors, who now have greater communication tools and resources to make their voices heard. Our data suggest that increasing numbers of small donors are not a polarizing infl uence, pushing politics and politicians to ends of the political spectrum. On the contrary, we found reason to be optimistic about changes in campaign funding for the years ahead.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | INTRODUCTION | PAGE 3

www.IPDI.org

No other nation spends as much money as the United States in the election of its political leaders, and in no other nation is campaign fundraising so conspicuous or so embedded in political life. Fundraising is an overriding concern for candidates and elected offi cials, and it takes up more and more of their time. It has become increasingly sophisticated, professionalized and successful. Fundraising success is considered a prime indicator of a candidate’s viability, and monitoring the money has become a staple of political journalism. And for millions of Americans, contributing money to a candidate or political cause connects them to candidates and other supporters in a simple act of political expression. The presidential campaign of 2004 was a watershed moment in political fundraising because of the convergence of a new regulatory regime, a bitterly fought campaign and closely divided electorate, and the increasing sophistication of Internet technology. The election was the fi rst test of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), which passed in 2002. BCRA removed a huge source of funding for federal campaigns – soft money – while doubling the limits of hard money individual contributions to $2,000 per candidate.1 The rancor of the 2004 election seemed a continuation of the very close and bitter election in 2000, compounded by a controversial war and a sitting president about whom opinion was deeply polarized. National advertising by independent advocacy organizations, so-called “527s,” only added to the intensity. Finally, the election was another step in the emergence of the Internet as a vehicle for political campaigns to inform, organize and raise money. More money was raised online than ever before and Howard Dean became the fi rst presidential candidate to center his early efforts and cement his early support online.

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.) The maximum aggregate amount that an individual could con-tribute to all party committees, candidates and PACs combined was $95,000 for the 2004 election cycle. The limits for the 2006 cycle are $2,100 for contributions to candidates and a combined aggregate limit of $101,400.

Dean’s campaign was remarkable for the community of supporters fostered online who funded the campaign and provided its early energy. The support, particularly his dramatic lead in early fundraising, made him the front-runner and put him in the spotlight of the national press corps. Other candidates had discovered the potential of raising money online in 2000 – John McCain raised $2.2 million in the week after the New Hampshire primary2 – but this was only a precursor to 2004. Dean raised more money online than any candidate before him, and raised a greater proportion of his total campaign funds from donors giving $200 or less than any of the 2004 candidates except Dennis Kucinich. Dean also raised more money than any other Democratic candidate by the end of 2003, something that typically assures a candidate of the nomination. The other Democratic candidates relied on donors who contributed $1,000 or more, which is the more traditional early fundraising path for presidential primary candidates. Dean’s campaign collapsed after the Iowa caucuses, but the surge of small donors was not confi ned to his campaign, which in itself is unusual. Third party or outsider candidates have often relied on small donors. John Anderson in 1980, Pat Robertson in 1988, Pat Buchanan and Jerry Brown in 1992 and Gary Bauer in 2000 all were successful appealing to small donors. Ronald Reagan also relied heavily on small donors in all three of his presidential campaigns. What was unusual for 2004 was that after Howard Dean dropped out of the race, both major party candidates shifted their own fundraising efforts toward small donors. By the end of the campaign, John Kerry had raised 37 percent of his total contributions from donors who gave $200 or less and President Bush had raised 31 percent. In contrast, in the 2000 election, Al Gore raised 20 percent and

2 John Mintz, “McCain Camp Enjoys a Big Net Advantage,” The Washington Post, 9 February 2000. More generally on McCain’s Internet-based fundraising in 2000, see Steve Davis, Larry Elin, and Grant Reeher, Click on Democracy: The Internet’s Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002).

INTRODUCTION

| INTRODUCTION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

Figure 2

SOURCE: CAMPAIGN FINANCE INSTITUTE

NOTE: Percentages are the proportion of individual contributions.

2000 2004

Percentage of individual contributions to presidential nominees in amounts less than $200

16%20%

31%

George Bush 16 percent from small donors.3

The Kerry campaign was ultimately able to raise enough money to compete with President Bush, who is a formidable fundraiser. Bush raised $96 million in 2000 and was widely expected before the campaign to raise $150 to $200 million in 2004 – an estimate he easily surpassed. The Bush campaign raised $257 million in contributions from individuals and $270 million in all. Nonetheless, the Kerry campaign was largely able to close the funding gap. Kerry raised $216 million in contributions from individuals and $235 million in all. Kerry was also able to raise about a third of his contributions online, whereas Bush raised much less online.4 This was due to Kerry’s need to raise money later in the campaign and to the fundraising strategies of both campaigns. While there was a surge of giving from small donors in 2004, much of that money was raised late in the campaign. Most of the early money came from large donors, and early money is critical. It buys advertising, enhances the perception of viability and attracts more money and support. The press sees early fundraising success as an indicator of a winning campaign. In 2003, a year before the election and months before the Democratic nominee was determined, contributions of $1,000 or more made up 66 percent of the individual contributions to the major candidates.5 The percentage of contributions from donors who gave $200 or less steadily increased through the summer of 2004, peaking in May for President Bush (when 65 percent of his contributions came from those who gave $200 or less) and June for John Kerry (47 percent). By the end of the campaign, Kerry had raised $80 million and Bush $79 million in individual contributions of less than $200. Except for Bush’s $96 million total in 2000, this was more than any candidate had ever raised in total for 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 campaigns of Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich were exceptional because each raised more than half of their early money from small donors, and for Dean’s campaign the amount was substantial. Nonetheless, large donors 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

3 Michael J. Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons 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, PACs or federal funding).

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-tion Contest of 2004.”

5 Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financing Presidential Nominations, “So the Voters May Choose: Reviving the Presidential Matching Fund System,” (Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Insti-tute, 2005).

Figure 1

Percentage of 2004 presidential campaign contributions in amounts less than $200

George W. Bush

John Kerry

Howard Dean

John Edwards

Wesley Clark

Richard Gephardt

Joe Lieberman

Dennis Kucinich

Bob Graham

Carol Mosley

Braun

Al Sharpton

$256m

$215m

$51m

$22m

$17m

$14m

$14m

$8m

$4m

$532k

$496k

31%

37%

60%

14%

31%

13%

9%

70%

9%

24%

13%

Total contributions

from individuals

SOURCE: CAMPAIGN FINANCE INSTITUTE

37%

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | INTRODUCTION | PAGE 5

www.IPDI.org

with the newly energized 527 organizations, such as America Coming Together, the Media Fund, Progress for America, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and Moveon.org. But most of these organizations were funded by a relatively small number of donors, and the money they collected in 2004 for federal campaigning did not match the amount of soft money in 2000. By one estimate, even taking into account all the additional money contributed to 527s, more than $300 million in soft money contributed in the 2000 campaign did not reappear in 2004.6 Large donors extend their infl uence by bundling, or the practice of one person soliciting donations from others, usually friends and acquaintances. Bundling surged in 2000 (especially with the Bush campaign) and continued apace in 2004. The practice makes the campaign indebted to individuals who each may be responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds. President Bush raised at least $76 million, or 26 percent of his primary campaign budget, from 327 “Pioneers” who raised at least $100,000 and 221 “Rangers” who raised at least $200,000. John Kerry raised at least $42 million, or nearly 17 percent of his primary campaign budget, from 226 “Vice Chairs” who raised at least $100,000 and 298 “Co-Chairs” who raised at least $50,000.7

The number of people who gave $200 or more to presidential campaigns (and hence are itemized on reports to the FEC) has grown steadily over the last 20 years, but it remains only a tiny minority of adults. Contributing money to politics is a form of political participation undertaken by precious few Americans. According to the Campaign Finance Institute, there were only 223,000 discrete donors who gave $200 or more to a major party presidential candidate in 2000 and 475,000 such donors in 2004. This means that presidential donors of $200 or more amounted to only one-tenth of one percent of the adult population in 2000 and two-tenths of one percent in 2004.8 But the dramatic growth story for 2004 came in the number of small donors. We know less about the number of small donors than about large donors because the campaigns and parties are not required to release that data. However, we do have enough information to make reasonable estimates. We know that in 2000, when data from all candidates were available, that there were 625,000 donors who gave less than $200 and that these donors gave the candidates an average of $60

6 Steve Weissman and Ruth Hassan, “BCRA and the 527 Groups,” in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Cam-paign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming)).

7 Public Citizen, “The Importance of Bundlers to the Bush & Kerry Campaigns: Post-Election Summary of Findings,” (Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, 2004).

8 These estimates vary from other public estimates which may count some donors more than once, calculate number of dona-tions rather than number of donors, include small donors of $200 or less, or include contributions to the parties along with the di-rect contributions to candidates being counted here.

each. In the 2004 presidential campaign contributions of less than $200 accounted for $206 million. If we assume that the average under-$200 donor gave $75 in 2004, a bit more than in 2000, that would mean there were about 2.8 million small donors. If the average donor gave as much as $100 that would still suggest there were more than two million such donors. Either way, it marks a huge increase over 2000 – at least a tripling and maybe more than a quadrupling in the number of small donors. Combining the small with the large donors would mean that somewhere between 1.1 and 1.5 percent of the adult population gave to a presidential candidate in 2004, compared to about 0.4 percent of the adult population in 2000. As in 2000, although the vast majority of the donors were small donors, the bulk of the money came from large donors. Both numbers grew, but the more dramatic growth in participation came from the pool of small donors.9 The amount of money raised in the 2004 election broke nearly every record. The presidential campaigns raised more than $600 million in donations and the national political parties raised another $1.2 billion, all of it in hard money. (Soft money contributions were banned under BCRA.) On top of that was $1.2 billion raised by House and Senate candidates and another $400 million raised and spent through federally active “527” organizations.10 So why did more people give in 2004 than ever before? Any consideration of the 2004 presidential election has to begin with the partisan divide in the electorate, the acrimony of the presidential campaigns and the polarized attitudes toward President Bush, especially framed in terms of the War in Iraq and national security. It was an extraordinary campaign in this respect. We certainly found some donors motivated by a dislike for John Kerry, but the hostility was more prevalent among those opposed to President Bush. This anger helps explain how the Democratic National Committee and John Kerry were essentially able to close the funding gap that has historically existed between the parties. Coupled with this was the greater availability of Internet access and information online that made it possible for donors to seek out candidate Web sites at their convenience. It was easier for motivated donors to give. In addition, the campaigns

9 For 2000 data, Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financ-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 System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004,” in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lan-ham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, (forthcoming)).

10 Federal Election Commission, 2004 Presidential Campaign Fi-nancial Activity Summarized [Online report] (3 February 2005 [cited 7 November 2005]); available from www.fec.gov/press/press2004, Federal Election Commission, Congressional Candi-dates Spend $1.16 Billion During 2003-2004 [Online report] (Fed-eral Election Commission, 9 June 2005 [cited 6 February 2006]); available from www.fec.gov/press/press2005, Weissman and Hassan, “BCRA and the 527 Groups.”

| INTRODUCTION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

actively promoted online giving. Online fundraising was cheaper for the campaigns and the new phenomenon attracted media coverage. Finally, professional political fundraisers have continued to hone sophisticated tactics such as micro-targeting and immediate online response.

Defi ning “small donors” and why they are important The term “small donors” means different things to different people, and this has only confused the discussion surrounding them. In the context of the presidential campaign “small donors” most often identifi es those people who gave less than $200 to a single candidate. When donors give $200 or more campaigns are required to report their names and other personal information to the FEC, so data on these donors are publicly available.11 The $200 cutoff is a distinction made by Congress in an effort to defi ne some reasonable threshold for disclosure, but it is not based on a belief that someone who gives slightly more than $200 thinks differently than someone who gives slightly less. Campaign representatives, in contrast, often talk about “small donors” as anyone who gives less than $1,000 or $2,000. Some fundraising professionals defi ne small donors as those who give small amounts in each contribution, even if the contributions add up to a large total. Party fundraisers, who can collect $25,000 from a donor, talk about $2,000 donors as “small.” This was especially true before BCRA. When soft money was unlimited it seemed that anyone giving “only” $1,000 was a small donor. Political journalists appear to identify donors by how the donors defi ne themselves, so one news story might describe a small donor as someone who gave $1,000 and in another story it’s someone who gave $25.12 The amount of money that defi nes a “small donor” depends on whom you ask. What is consistent, however, is the view that small donors are good for the political process. On one side are arguments made about the supposedly corrupting infl uence of large contributions. On the other side are a set of affi rmative arguments about the importance of 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.

11 Some data on donors who gave less than $200 are available from a few campaigns that choose to report this information to the FEC and campaigns seeking matching funds during the presidential primaries.

12 See, for example, Paul Farhi, “Small Donors Become Big Political Force: Both Major Political Parties See Surge in Contributors,” The Washington Post, 3 May 2004, Charles Pope, “Campaign 2004: Small Donors Beef up Political Coffers,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October 2004.

How many people contribute to political parties or candidates? We know how many people gave $200 or more to federal campaigns, but not how many gave less than that. Campaigns are not required to report that information. Public opinion surveys regularly ask whether someone contributed money to a political candidate or party, but the data are hard to interpret because of differences in question wording and because people often exaggerate their reports of political participation. Giving money to parties or candidates is almost certainly “overreported” by survey respondents, but it is unclear by how much. About 12 percent of adult Americans responding to the National Election Studies survey said they made a campaign contribution to a candidate or party (at the federal, state or local level) in 2004. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press estimated 15 percent of adults donated money “in support of candidates” in the 2004 election, although respondents may view donations to many different groups to be “in support of candidates.” A George Washington University Battleground poll conducted in October 2005, almost a year after the election, found that 28 percent said they had given money to a candidate or party.1

These estimates are almost certainly high. Ten percent of the adult population is more than 20 million donors. We suspect that a closer estimate would be between fi ve and 10 percent of adults gave money to a federal candidate or campaign (but not necessarily the presidential campaign) in 2004.

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 Center for the People and the Press, 11 November 2004 2004 [cited 20 October 2005]); available from people-press.org/reports/. George Washington University Bat-tleground Poll, GWU Battleground 2005 (XXVIII) [Online report] (25 October 2005 [cited 15 December 2005]); available from www.tarrance.com/battleground.html.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | METHODOLOGY | PAGE 7

www.IPDI.org

The goal of this project was to study people who gave small donations to the presidential primary candidates in the 2004 election and, in particular, people who gave online or who gave for the fi rst time. Like all social research, what we know about our subject – political donors – is shaped by the available data. In this case, campaign fi nance law has greatly infl uenced how we study political donors and what we know about them. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) monitors campaign fi nancing and enforces campaign fi nance laws. Federal candidates must collect the names and addresses of anyone who contributes $50 or more and must report to the FEC the names and personal information of anyone who donates $200 or more to a federal candidate during an election (either a primary or general election).1 The FEC makes that information public on its Web site (www.fec.gov). Computerized databases and the Internet have made this information much more easily accessible, and FEC reports have become a staple of political news coverage. Researchers can obtain the names and addresses of these publicly reported donors (anyone who gave $200 or more) and attempt to contact them for study. Most prior donor research is therefore about these donors. The Small Donors Project obtained its list of donors who gave $200 or more from the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI), which was a partner in this project. CFI cleaned and sorted the FEC data and maintains its own database of donors to federal campaigns. This list was a random sample of everyone who gave $200 or more to a presidential candidate anytime during the 2004 campaign. We know less about other groups of political donors because it is more diffi cult to identify and contact them. For example, we know less about donors to state campaigns because so many of these elections take place. Surveying each of the states every two years would be a daunting task. Likewise, we know little about 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 about people who gave less than $200 to presidential

1 State campaigns are, of course, monitored by the states them-selves.

campaigns, and who comprise the vast majority of presidential donors. Most federal candidates do not give to the FEC the names of donors who contribute less than $200, although they certainly could. However, presidential candidates who wish to obtain matching campaign funds from the government are required to submit the same information about any contribution they wish to have matched, including small donors. The government will match up to the fi rst $250 of each contribution, and the total government funding is, of course, capped. To receive these matching funds in 2004, candidates must have agreed to limit their spending to about $50 million in the primaries and $75 million in the general election. Six Democratic candidates and independent candidate Ralph Nader fi led for matching funds and provided to the FEC some names of donors, most of whom gave less than $200.2 President George W. Bush, John Kerry, Howard Dean and Carol Moseley Braun did not ask for matching funds. For Bush, Kerry and Dean, this was because they did not wish to be bound by the spending limits. This wholesale rejection of public funding by the major candidates follows upon George W. Bush’s rejection in 2000, which in turn was partly a reaction to Steve Forbes’s decision to do so in 1996.3 Moseley Braun did not raise enough money to qualify. The Rev. Al Sharpton submitted names but was eventually denied eligibility for matching funds. It is from the lists of matching funds donors that we drew part of our sample of small donors. Many of these matching funds donors gave to more than one candidate. For example, early small donors to John Edwards often went on to contribute additional money to John Kerry. This list of names from the matching fund fi les, therefore, includes people who were not only donors to these seven candidates. It is, however, primarily a Democratic list.

2 Lyndon H. LaRouche also received $1.4 million in matching funds.

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-tion Press, 2001), Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.”

METHODOLOGY

| METHODOLOGY | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

To get beyond the matching fund fi les, we approached representatives from the Dean, Kerry and Bush campaigns immediately after the election and requested some names of small donors to survey for this project. We received encouraging responses from two campaigns, and a fi rm commitment from one campaign to participate. Unfortunately, after several months of negotiations all three campaigns eventually refused to provide even a limited sample of names of their small donors. However, during the 2004 campaign the Bush/Cheney re-election Web site posted the names of all its campaign donors as part of an effort to offer greater transparency to the campaign. The campaign also did the same thing in the 2000 election.4 The effort was both praised for its openness and criticized as a ploy to emphasize small donor support and play up the grassroots aspects of the campaign. The information was posted online in such a way that the total dataset could not be downloaded or analyzed, so it was of little immediate use to journalists or researchers. It was not possible to sort the information easily, although a few media outlets tried.5 This online feature was available throughout the campaign and removed immediately after the election. The Kerry and Dean campaigns made no similar effort. Despite the unwieldy nature of the Bush Web site data, researchers at the Ray C. Bliss Institute for Applied Politics at the University of Akron downloaded lists of small donors from the Bush campaign and made available to the Small Donors Project about 1,200 names. Our sample therefore consists of (1) a random sample of all presidential donors who gave $200 or more and (2) samples randomly drawn from the seven campaigns that applied for matching funds (six Democratic candidates and Ralph Nader) supplemented with a sample of small donors from the Bush/Cheney Web site. This sample of donors is disproportionately Democratic because more names were available to sample. While thousands of names of Democratic small donors were available from the FEC, fewer names of Republican donors were available from the list culled from the Bush/Cheney Web site. We try to take this into account in our analysis by looking carefully for the effects of partisanship in the results. In addition, the name of each small donor was later checked with the FEC database to try to make certain the donor did not give enough to another candidate to become a large donor. (For example, someone might have given $25

4 Lindsey Arent, Bush Peels Back the Curtain [Online magazine] (Wired News, 10 September 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]); available from www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,21695,00.html, Reuters, Bush’s Campaign Donor List Gets Mixed Response [Online magazine] (CNET News.com, 10 September 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]); available from news.com.com/2100-1023-204335.html.

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 -nance.org/tracker/summer00/knox.html.

to Edwards early in the campaign, but later gave $500 to John Kerry.) This sample of small donors, while not strictly representative, is refl ective of the donor pool in general. It also includes a large number of donors to the John Kerry and Howard Dean campaigns. This is because many donors made contributions to multiple candidates. So although the Kerry campaign did not provide a list of small donors, 39 percent of the small donors we surveyed made a donation to Kerry. The Small Donors Survey was conducted by mail and online from July 1 to November 30, 2005. About 5,860 people were sampled. The response rate after bad addresses were removed was 27 percent, or 1,581 completed surveys. Of those, 935 were from our lists of small donors and 646 were from the FEC lists of donors who gave $200 or more. (A more detailed description of the methodology is in Appendix A.) The focus of this report is on several groups that we know little about – small donors, fi rst-time donors and online donors, who are really appearing for the fi rst time as a major factor in a presidential election. We generally try to confi ne our analysis to these groups. We are less interested in partisan differences, for example, or in aspects about large donors in general. Nonetheless, as we shall see, partisan differences were important in several analyses, and we note these differences when they arise. But for the most part, we focus on small, fi rst-time and online donors. While we mention some overall tendencies apparent in our sample of large donors, such as the increase in the number of female donors, stronger support of these observations awaits further research. Of course, the small donor cutoff of $200 is an arbitrary one, established only by FEC guidelines. There is no evidence that $150 donors are different from $250 donors (other than the $100). We do not know that they have different motives to donate. On the other hand, we are confi dent that people who give the maximum contribution of $2,000 differ in many ways from donors who give much less. We do not accept the $200 cutoff as anything other than a line chosen largely for convenience. It seems to us that the person who gives $50 to a candidate fi ve times would have more in common with someone who gives $25 fi ve times than with a person who wrote a single check for $500. Nonetheless, we adopt the arbitrary cutoff of $200 for some of our analyses mostly because of the way the data are organized, and they are organized that way because of the law. It is important to keep in mind that we sampled presidential donors. Donors also contributed to local and state campaigns, which collected $1.8 billion in the 2004 election cycle.6 They contributed to political action committees (PACs), individual congressional campaigns and congressional committees, such as the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,

6 Institute on Money in State Politics, “State Elections Overview 2004,” (Helena, MT: Institute on Money in State Politics, 2005).

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | METHODOLOGY | PAGE 9

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.

| SMALL AND LARGE DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | SMALL AND LARGE DONORS | PAGE 11

www.IPDI.org

SMALL AND LARGE DONORS

The fi rst portion of this section describes the demographics — gender, age, education and household income — for donors who gave $200 or more. We do this in order to compare the 2004 donors with past surveys and to get a better sense of the donor pool in general. As we shall see, donors are from an elite socioeconomic group. After that we turn to just the 2004 data gathered for this report and begin to compare small donors (those who gave $100 or less) with large donors (those who gave $500 or more).

Donors who Gave $200 or More

Gender Most surveys show that political donors are disproportionately male. But even in estimating something as simple as gender we must keep in mind that donor lists are inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so. It is common knowledge that some big donors expand their contributions by having spouses or children make contributions. In addition, our interviews with donors found that many couples donate money as a single unit. The donor may be designated as the male head of the household because he wrote the check, 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 marriages, but it is much more likely that a couple will agree on political choices when it comes to giving money. With these caveats in mind, research going back 20 years has almost always found large donors to be disproportionately male. In 1996 and 2000 presidential donor surveys showed that 70 percent of large donors

($200 or more) were male.1 This may be changing. We found evidence that the gender gap was smaller in 2004 than in prior elections. Our data suggest that among donors who gave $200 or more the proportion who are women has increased. We also fi nd some support for this fi nding from an analysis of the names of donors collected by the FEC. This study found that female donors (or at least people who have female sounding names) increased from 30 percent in 2000 to 36 percent in 2004.2 In our survey, the proportion of females among the $200-or-more donors was an even higher 42 percent.

Age Media images of political campaigns often focus on younger supporters, and that was especially true in 2004. Howard Dean’s campaign received extensive media coverage early in the primaries and its image was one of youth. Dean’s emphasis on the Internet only exaggerated this image because online activists tend to be younger.3 There were also enormous well-publicized efforts to engage young voters, especially through the Internet. The New Voters Project and a coalition of youth voting groups such as Rock the Vote registered

1 Information about past donors is taken from Clifford W. Brown, Jr., Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Peter L. Francia et al., “Indi-vidual Donors in the 1996 Federal Elections,” in Financing the 1996 Election, ed. John C. Green (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999), Clyde Wilcox, Jr. Clifford W. Brown, and Lynda W. Powell, “Sex and the Political Contributor: The Gender Gap among Contributors to Presidential Candidates in 1988,” Political Research Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1993), 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 (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).


www.IPDI.org

millions of young voters.4

But the truth is that young people are still less likely to participate in politics. They are signifi cantly less likely than everyone else to vote. While the percentage of adults aged 18 to 24 who voted rose from 36 percent in 2000 to 42 percent in 2004, 64 percent of all eligible voters voted in 2004.5 And young people are less likely to give money to candidates. Political donors have tended to be older than average, and 2004 was no exception. More than 60 percent of all 2004 donors were over 50, and that was true in 1996 and 2000 as well. Just 2 percent of donors who gave $200 or more in 2004 were under 35.

Income Not surprisingly, donors who gave at least $200 have much more household income than average Americans, and in the past eight years the donor pool has become even wealthier. In 1996 about a quarter of these donors claimed more than $250,000 for their yearly household income. That proportion grew to 44 percent in 2000 and 35 percent in 2004. Fewer than two percent of all American households in 2004 earned that much.6

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 many prior researchers don’t even bother to consider them. Almost half of adult Americans (45 percent) stopped their formal education with a high school diploma, but they are largely invisible in the donor pool.7

Small and Large Donors Compared

Gender We now turn to comparing small and large donors, which is the focus of our report. Here we compare three groups: donors who gave $100 or less (small donors), donors who gave $101 to $499, and donors who gave $500

4 i.e. www.newvotersproject.org, www.rockthevote.com, www.youth-vote.org

5 U.S. Census Bureau, Table 1. Reported Rates of Voting and Registration for the Population 18 Years and over, by Selected Characteristics: Novem-ber 2004. (U.S. Census Bureau, 26 May 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]); available from www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releas-es/archives/CB05-73Table1.xls.

6 U.S. Census Bureau, Table Hinc-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 or More for Households: 2004 (U.S. Census Bureau, 24 June 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]); available from pubdb3.census.gov/mac-ro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm.

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: 2004. (U.S. Census Bureau, 28 March 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]); available from www.census.gov/population/socdemo/educa-tion/cps2004/tab02-01.xls.

We give as a unit. We’re a team.

We discuss it back and forth, and

I can’t tell you of any decisions

that we shelved because we

didn’t agree on it, because we

tend to agree. … I don’t give to

conservative causes and my wife

gives to liberal causes. We have

friends that I think probably do

that, but I don’t know how they

can exist under the same roof.

They must never talk politics.

— a 61-year-old George Bush donor from Michigan

“

”Table 1Demographic profi le of presidential donors who gave $200 or more, 1996-2004

1996 2000 2004

GenderMale 72 % 70 % 58 %

Female 28 % 30 % 42 %Age

18 to 34 7 % 2 % 2 %35 to 50 30 % 29 % 29 %51 to 65 25 % 41 % 46 %Over 65 37 % 28 % 23 %

Household IncomeLess than $100,000 43 % 14 % 22 %

$100,000 to $249,000 32 % 42 % 43 %$250,000 to $500,000 24 % 21 % 20 %

More than $500,000 NA 23 % 15 %Education

Less than college degree 27 % 19 % 9 %College degree 23 % 23 % 21 %

Some graduate school NA 12 % 10 %Graduate school 50 % 48 % 60 %

n 1,094 1,119 646

NOTE: 1996 data from Francia et al (1999). 2000 data from Wilcox et al (2003). 2004 data from the Small Donors Project.


www.IPDI.org

or more (large donors). As we will see, while small donors differ from large donors, small donors remain fi rmly part of the upper and upper middle classes in America. A survey of donors who gave less than $200 in the 2000 election found that 76 percent were male, so they refl ected the gender breakdown of the $200-and-over donors at 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 this observation because our sample of small donors is not completely representative of all small donors in 2004, but it adds support for the observation that more women have entered the donor pool.

Age As we saw above, political donors are generally middle aged or older. The median age of those who gave $100 or less was 59, which makes them older than everyone else.9 But small donors ($100 or less) are more congregated at both the young end (ages 18 to 34) and the old end (over 65) of the scale. There is a possible explanation for this. Much of political giving hinges on the ability to give. People between the ages of 35 and 65 are in their prime earning years and simply have more money to contribute. We fi nd no evidence of the age gap widely reported for donors to the Howard Dean campaign, including the well-publicized claim that more than a quarter of all Dean’s donors were under age 30.10 The culture of youth was a reoccurring theme in the media coverage of the Dean campaign, particularly early in the campaign,11 but the money still came from older donors. The median age of donors who reported that their fi rst campaign donation was to Howard Dean was 58, as was the median age of donors who reported that they made any contribution to Dean.12 Fewer than 5 percent of his donors in our sample were under age 30. Our sample of Dean’s donors is not representative (the Dean campaign did not provide a list

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.

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-ton, Unelectable, My Ass! [Web site posting] (7 January 2004 [cited December 11 2005]); available from www.alternet.org/story/17512.). 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 [Online magazine] (The Nation, 16 March 2004 [cited 30 September 2005]); available from www.thenation.com/doc/20040329.kame-netz. It is repeated in Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything (New York: Re-gan Books, 2005).

11 See, for example, Kamenetz, ‘Deanie Babies’ Grow Up, Mark Singer, “Running on Instinct,” The New Yorker, 12 January 2004, Gary Wolf, “How the Internet Invented Howard Dean,” Wired, January 2004.

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-nors who gave less than $200 were no younger than those who gave more.

FROM THE RESEARCH:

Almost half of adult Americans (45 percent) stopped their formal education with the high school diploma, but they are largely invisible in the donor pool.

Table 2Demographic profi le of presidential donors in 2004

Donors who gave $100 or

less

Donors who gave

$101 to $499


moreGender

Male 59 % 59 % 59 %Female 41 % 41 % 41 %

Age18 to 34 8 % 6 % 1 %35 to 50 20 % 27 % 29 %51 to 65 37 % 42 % 45 %Over 65 34 % 25 % 24 %

Median Age 59 56 57Household Income

Less than $25,000 8 % 3 % 1 %$25,001 to $49,999 21 % 5 % 3 %

$50,000 to $99,999 38 % 33 % 16 %$100,000 to $249,000 28 % 43 % 41 %

$250,000 to $500,000 4 % 13 % 21 %More than $500,000 1 % 3 % 19 %

EducationLess than college degree 24 % 13 % 10 %

College degree 25 % 22 % 21 %Some graduate school 12 % 10 % 10 %

Graduate school 40 % 54 % 59 %n 847 244 490

I think it’s my age. During the

previous two elections, the fi rst

time I was only 18 and I wasn’t

really involved in politics, and

the second time I was a little

more involved, and then this

time I had a full-time job and I

had money to donate.

— a 24-year-old Ralph Nader donor from South Carolina.

“

”


www.IPDI.org

of small donors), but if his donors were so dramatically younger than those of the other presidential candidates a greater difference should appear. Dean’s campaign workers may have been young, but it appears his donors were not.13

Income While the donor pool is wealthier than average Americans, people who gave small contributions are more likely to look like they come from middle class households. 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 is how much money the household earns, and hence how much money is available for giving. Forty percent of those who gave $500 or more have a household income of $250,000 or more. In other demographic traits – such as age and education – large and small donors appear closer together. To put the effects of wealth in another way – wealthy donors almost always gave a lot, comparatively speaking, whatever their age, gender or occupation. If we just look at the donors whose households earn more than $100,000 a year, the average total amount given is more than $860.

Education Small donors are less likely to report the level of education common among large donors, but they are still highly educated in comparison to the general population. About 40 percent of under-$100 donors report they have received a graduate degree, compared to 8 percent of the general population.14 About 59 percent of donors who gave an average of $500 or more have received a graduate degree.

Religious Faith Religious advocacy groups and religious rhetoric 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 spoke in religious terms on the campaign trail. Kerry was more reluctant to talk about religion, although he certainly did so, especially before black audiences.16 Although there was some backlash by religious supporters who did not

13 In fact, even Dean’s supporters were no more likely to be younger than other Democratic activists. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, The Dean Activists: Their Profi le and Prospects [Online report] (6 April 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]); available 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: 2004. ([cited).

15 David D. Kirkpatrick, “Bush Appeal to Churches Seeking Help Raises Doubts,” The New York Times, 2 July 2004.

16 Jim VandeHei, “Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve; Candidate Usually Talks About Religion before Black Audiences Only,” The Washington Post, 16 July 2004.

Table 3Percentage who attend church at least once a week

Donors who gave $100

or less


or more

General Public

Republicans 50 % 43 % 50 %Democrats 33 % 13 % 35 %

NOTE: Information about the general public survey appears in Appendix A.

Table 4Percentage who say religion is “very important” in their lives


or less


or more

General Public

Republicans 52 % 46 % 66 %Democrats 26 % 17 % 55 %

NOTE: Information about the general public survey appears in Appendix A.

Table 5Occupations

Donors who gave $100 or less

Donors who gave $500 or more

Retired 31 % 21 %Education 9 % 7 %Legal 4 % 14 %Health 6 % 7 %

NOTE: Respondents can name more than one category (i.e. “retired teacher”)

I do think it was more — a

closer, politically-charged

election — (that prompted me

to contribute), but I also think

that when it comes down to it,

I had the money.

— a 37-year-old Howard Dean and John Kerry donor from Oregon.

“

”


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 public. Donors may even be more secular than non-donors. In this analysis, we examine Democrats and Republicans separately because of the clear differences in support the parties received from religious voters. Large donors ($500 or more) are less likely than members of their own party in 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 important, especially in 2000 and 2004, and we expected that donors would report a greater emphasis on religion in their lives, but they did not. Both large and small donors are no more religious than their own partisans in the general public, and this is true for members of both parties. Donors are generally more ideologically extreme, as we shall see below, but they are not more religious.

Occupation Political donors are disproportionately white collar workers and retired. Most of those who listed an occupation could be classifi ed as white color workers, rather than administrative, trade or other workers.18 About 31 percent of small donors and 21 percent of large donors reported being retired. 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.

I’ve only been old enough

to vote in the last three

presidential elections, so this is

the fi rst year I’ve had a salaried

job, a well paying job. The time

before I was in college and time

before that in high school.

— a 30-year-old David Cobb donor from Alabama. (Cobb was the

Green Party presidential candidate.)

“

”

FROM THE RESEARCH:

Despite the importance of religion in the campaign, political donors were no more religious than the general public.


www.IPDI.org

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.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | PAGE 17

www.IPDI.org

THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING:

ONLINE AND OFFLINE We now move to an analysis of political giving. First we look at how people contributed money, if they contributed in the past, and whether they intend to in the future. Then we look more closely at why they contributed. Throughout this section we compare the differences between small donors ($100 or less) and large donors ($500 or more). We also examine the differences between those who used the Internet to make some of their political contributions (online donors) and those who did not (offl ine donors). In addition to the surge of small donations in the 2004 campaign was a surge of donations online. Donors could use a credit or debit card to make contributions through a Web site, and campaigns could cut processing and reporting costs and get immediate access to the donation. Collecting small online contributions has become so easy and effi cient that campaigns have greater incentives to pursue small donations. Thus these two important developments in American politics in 2004 – small donors and online giving – are closely related.

Online and Offl ine Donors Compared Online contributions will be critical for the future of political fundraising. Far more donors gave online in 2004 than in 2000, when just a fraction of donors gave online, and online giving is particularly attractive to young donors.1 In 2004, more than half the Democratic donors and a quarter of the Republican donors made at least one of their donations online. There was no difference in the rate of online giving between small donors ($100 or less) and large donors ($500 or more) – contrary to a widely held assumption that large donors did not give online. But more important than the size of the donation was party – the Democrats were more successful funneling their donations to the Internet than were Republicans. This is in part due to

1 Surveys conducted by Gallup and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press during the 2000 campaign found be-tween 1 and 5 percent of people who went online for political in-formation also made a donation online. See Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience, Familiar Names [Online report] (3 December 2000 [cited 12 January 2006]); available from www.people-press.org/reports.

the infl uence of the Howard Dean supporters who migrated to the Kerry campaign after Dean dropped out. Dean’s supporters and even supporters of Wesley Clark and Dennis Kucinich showed a propensity to organize and donate online. The Kerry campaign also emphasized online donations in the spring of 2004. The Bush campaign simply had less incentive to push online contributions later in the campaign because it was sitting on a larger bank account for the stretch run to November. The onus to raise money was on Kerry. Online donors tended to be younger than other donors (refl ecting the tendency of young people to quickly adopt Internet innovations). In fact, people aged 18 to 34 rarely gave offl ine. More than 80 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds used a credit or debit card through a Web site, rather than writing a check, for at least one of their donations. Of those aged 35 to 50, 67 percent made at least one donation online. Only about a quarter of those 65 or older gave online. Again, Democrats in all age groups were more likely to give money online.

The Dynamics of Giving

Campaign contact: Asking for Contributions Money is given to those who ask, and fundraisers know that you need to ask often to raise a lot of money. Many prospects will say no two or three times before fi nally becoming a donor. This is not a case of repeated requests wearing down a prospective donor’s resistance, but rather of catching the prospective donor with the right request at the right time. Someone who throws away a letter unopened one day may open one the next day, perhaps newly motivated to donate after watching the news or talking to a colleague at work. Generally, the more personal the request the more likely it is to succeed. It’s easier to say no over the phone 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 coveted and more likely to have personal connections with candidates in the fi rst place. The Internet has made it easier and cheaper to ask people for money, often in a very engaging way. Contact can be highly personalized, so a request can be tied to

| THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL GIVING | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

an issue important to the prospective donor. Web sites have also made it easier to give before being solicited directly by the campaign. Before the Internet, someone who wished to make an unsolicited donation had to undertake a longer process to get information about a campaign and make a donation, usually by mail. Donors now don’t need to be 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 bitterness and, consequently, highly motivated donors. Unsolicited online giving still presupposes a motivated donor, even if the donor need not be so highly motivated as those who sought out the campaign before Internet fundraising. E-mail and online advertising are fairly passive and serve donors who are looking to give. If direct mail is akin to fundraisers chasing donors, then the Internet is akin to donors chasing fundraisers. In our interviews with donors, many said their fi rst donation was unsolicited and made 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 candidates to choose from, prospective donors would go online looking for a candidate they could support.3

Small donors ($100 or less) who gave online were the most likely to say they gave without being asked. About 46 percent said they made the fi rst donation unsolicited, without getting a phone call, letter or e-mail asking for money. This refl ects the fact that these small donors were 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 2004 than the party sent throughout all of the 1990s – and more than 60 million pieces of direct mail were sent during

2 For some discussion of unsolicited giving in 2000 see Alexandra Coo-per and Michael Munger, “Big Money, Small Money: Characteristics of Donors in the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2000” (paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, Baltimore, Md., March 11-14 2004).

3 The previous three paragraphs are informed by Hal Malchow, Personal interview, 10 February 2006.

Table 6Percentage of donors who gave online, by party



Republicans 19 % 31 %Democrats 54 % 64 %

Table 7Percentage of donors who gave online, by age group



18 to 34 87 % 67 %35 to 50 65 % 70 %51 to 65 65 % 59 %Over 65 21 % 32 %

Table 8 Percentage who contributed without being asked



Online donors 46 % 39 %Offl ine donors 24 % 29 %

FROM THE RESEARCH:

What is remarkable is that among young people aged 18 to 34, very few gave offl ine. More than 80 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds used a credit or debit card through a Web site, rather than writing a check.


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 received e-mail. Postal addresses for registered voters are publicly available, and voter registration lists are some of the most important lists direct mailers use. Campaigns 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 they made an online donation. About 80 percent of online donors – both large donors and small donors – say they got e-mail appeals asking for more donations.5 For donors who want to keep the campaign at bay – to donate but not get calls or letters at home – e-mail is the means to do that. Online giving clearly resonates with donors, and part of the reason may be because e-mail lets them deal with the campaign on their own terms. They are unwilling to be contacted by other means. We talked to several donors whose reaction to e-mail was unexpected. They said that because e-mail was easily sorted and did 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 – eventually – get their attention. When we looked at who asked whom to give, large donors were slightly more likely than small donors to be asked by the campaigns, but they were a lot more likely to be asked by friends and family. This refl ects the social circles within which large donors move. For large donors, friends and colleagues are donors too, and these friends are willing to solicit money for a campaign. After people donated, they likely received a request for more money from the campaign, regardless of how much they gave. This is pressure that all donors felt, but pressure to contribute is more effective when it comes from people we know and respect – friends and family. That social pressure was much greater for large donors. Online small donors were more likely to be asked to donate again than were offl ine small donors. The Internet has given small donors increased opportunities to connect with others. For large donors, the distinction between online and offl ine donors had less of an effect. In this way, the Internet has helped close the gap between small and large 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.

4 Anthony J. Jr. Corrado, Comments made at The Campaign Finance Institute Forum, “The Election After Reform: Money & Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.” 14 January 2005, Linda Feldmann, “In Politics, the Rise of Small Donors,” The Christian Science Monitor, 28 June 2004, Malchow.

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.

Table 9Percentage contacted by letter, e-mail, phone, or in person



By letter 80 % 90 %By e-mail 47 % 63 %By phone 32 % 40 %In person 7 % 16 %

NOTE: Respondents could check more than one response.

Table 10Percentage contacted by e-mail




FROM THE RESEARCH:

The Democratic National Committee sent more direct mail in the fi rst few months of 2004 than the party sent throughout all of the 1990s — more than 60 million pieces of direct mail were sent during the campaign.

I was interested in Wesley Clark

before he announced that he

would run. … As soon as he did,

I went on the Internet and found

the ‘Draft Wesley Clark’ group, a

couple Clark groups that I joined,

and from there they kind of led me

to where I could donate. No one

ever asked me to do it.

— a 58-year-old Wesley Clark donor from Indiana.

“

”


www.IPDI.org

The First Donation For obvious reasons, fundraisers are intensely interested in the moments just before someone donates for the fi rst time. Something prompts a person fi nally to say “OK” and write a check or share their credit card number, moving from the great majority of people who are non-donors into the fairly select club of donors. This fi rst donation is rarely without prompting, either via direct solicitation, some reference in the media or a personal conversation. We asked donors to indicate from a list of choices what might have prompted the fi rst donation. The responses 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 of small donors and a third of large donors said that a letter in the mail was among the things that prompted their fi rst donation. The next most likely responses were the media – seeing something on television news or in print media. Making a donation is often a reaction to something in the media, and these responses tended to be closely related – donors who saw something in the newspaper, for example, 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 exclusively on battleground states, so many people did not see much. Large donors were much more likely than small donors to cite a “personal” reason – saying they were encouraged to donate by a family member, friend or colleague. This personal touch is a powerful incentive and it again refl ects the networks of donors within which large donors circulate. Finally, about 5 percent of respondents said that a Meetup event or house party was an incentive for their fi rst donation. Considering that only a tiny fraction of the population attended such events, this shows that these gatherings were a powerful infl uence on potential donors. A quarter of all the respondents (24 percent) who attended a Meetup or house party said it prompted them to make their fi rst donation. The political use of Meetups was 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. 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 collected at the time of donation, so this suggests donors don’t remember correctly or that they got involved online 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 election, and some received tremendous exposure. “This Land,” a political parody video by JibJab Media, was seen by tens of millions of viewers online with only news coverage

Table 11Percentage asked by “anyone”




Table 12Percentage asked by a campaign representative




Did anyone ask you to contribute to a candidate or party?

Table 13Percentage asked by a friend or colleague




Table 14Percentage asked by a family member




A former colleague asked

me. He was involved in the

campaign and said Clark was

good on the economy.

— a 38-year-old Wesley Clark donor from Massachusetts.

“”


www.IPDI.org

and word-of-mouth advertising.6 Among small donors who gave online, 8 percent said an online video helped prompt a donation, which we consider an impressive feat for a new medium fl ying under the radar of the mass media.

Are they regular donors? The donor pool does not appear to be as stable year after year as researchers had previously thought. Past scholarship assumed there was a pool of regular large donors that returned each election to form the foundation of a campaign’s funding. The Small Donors Survey supports other convincing evidence from the 2004 election that this may not be so. Large donors are certainly more likely than small donors to give money in “most” elections, but these differences are not dramatic. More importantly, there is a fair amount of “churn” in the donor pool – people move in to and out of the donor pool, depending on the election. As we shall see later, fi rst-time donors make up 23 percent of small donors ($100 or less) and 15 percent of large donors ($500 or more). But in addition, 39 percent of

6 Carol Darr and Julie Barko, “Under the Radar and over the Top: Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election,” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004). JibJab Media (www.jibjab.com) claims the video was seen 80 million times.

large donors, presumably the most committed donors, say they only give in “some” elections. In other words, a majority of large donors say they are sometimes non-donors in presidential elections. When we ask about 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 (154 donors in our sample), just 42 percent said they give in “most” presidential elections. Past surveys of presidential donors suggested a more static pool of donors who return to donate in nearly every election. However, a recent analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute of the FEC records of all presidential contributors in 1996, 2000 and 2004 shows a more fl uid population of donors in both 2000 and 2004. Only 31 percent of the donors who gave the maximum $1,000 contribution to George Bush in 2000 (and 30 percent of his donors of $200 or more) returned in 2004 to make any donation at all (of more than the reportable threshold of $200).7 For the other 2000 candidates, the proportion of return donors was even smaller. To look at the same point from the other end: A substantial majority of George Bush’s and John

7 This analysis of FEC disclosure records appears in Malbin, “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.” Twenty-fi ve percent of Al Gore’s donors in 2000 and 21 percent of Bill Bradley’s gave $200 or more to a presidential candidate in 2004. Ibid., p. 226.

Table 15Did 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 %



www.IPDI.org

Kerry’s 2004 donors of $200 or more did not give to a presidential candidate in 2000. The importance of this fi nding for our subject is this: If there is more churning for donors than professional fundraisers and survey researchers once thought, that means there is more opportunity for the next generation of fundraisers and candidates to fi nd new donors. It also means there is more risk for those who rely on the same old pool to keep giving. The 2004 election has shown us that politics is more fl uid than we once thought. That, in turn, creates openings for those who can use new techniques, and new means of communications, to persuade new people to come into the system.

Future giving Questions about future behavior can be unreliable. Most people can’t tell you what they will do this weekend, let alone next year. Nonetheless, questions about future political plans help us assess someone’s intent and their 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 these donors remain polarized by the election. Quite unexpectedly, we also found that online donors were more likely to say they expect to donate money and volunteer in 2008. In particular, being an online donor strongly

8 See Appendix A for methodology.

What is Meetup.com?

Meetup.com is a Web site (www.meetup.com) that connects together people of similar interests by facilitating offl ine gatherings. People who share hobbies, similar backgrounds or political ideals can fi nd others with similar interests, share information and organize online, then meet locally. The service was tremendously popular at bringing together activists during the 2004 election, particularly supporters of Howard Dean early in the election. During much of the campaign 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 offshoot of the Dean campaign, still comprised more than 150,000 Meetup members. The company raises revenue from fees paid by meeting locations, site advertising and monthly group fees.

FROM THE RESEARCH:

A quarter (24 percent) of all the respondents who attended a Meetup or house party said it prompted them to make their fi rst donation.


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 of their deeper involvement in politics. We also believe this is evidence of the empowering nature of online politics and its potential to encourage political involvement. Finally, the amount of money someone contributed did not have any infl uence on whether they would donate again in 2008. This is further support of our fi nding above that the donor pool is more fl uid. Here we see that big donors were not more likely than small donors to say they would return as donors.

Summary Online giving took off in 2004, especially among donors who were Democrats. Half the Democratic donors made at least one contribution online. Online donors tended to be younger, and this suggests that a lot of future giving may move online, provided that the donor pool is suffi ciently motivated. 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 of donors give as a response to a prompting like a letter or phone call. Direct mail is still the most important way campaigns have to contact potential donors. The impact of e-mail on the donation process is tempered by the fact that e-mail addresses are not yet required on voter registration forms or other sources of mailing lists. Campaigns culled thousands of e-mail addresses from people who visited Web sites, but prospecting for donors is still dominated by direct mail. Small donors get asked to donate by the campaigns less often than large donors, but this difference is not great. The big difference is when it comes to friends, family and work colleagues. Large donors move in social circles with other donors and those donors ask for money. A large donor is three times as likely as a small donor to say that a friend or colleague asked them for a donation. 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 donors, and 24 percent of all those who attended a Meetup said it prompted their fi rst donation. Meetups for small donors and house parties for large donors were powerful incentives to donate. If we think about a political donation as the result of a motivated person reacting to a political message at just the right time, the importance of the Internet is in its reach. It can provide signifi cant content to large numbers of people directly and cheaply. People who go online come in contact with more messages, more often. The Internet helps small donors connect with these “messages,” whether that means a campaign’s Web site or an e-mail from a friend suggesting they make a political contribution. Online small

Table 18Percentage who plan to donate in 2008, regardless of who is running




Table 19Percentage who plan to volunteer in 2008




Table 17Percentage who plan to donate in 2008




Table 16Frequency of giving in presidential elections



Never 3 % 1 %One election 26 % 22 %Some elections 44 % 39 %Most elections 28 % 38 %

A very important client of my

husband, who was a member

of the Republican Party and

had pledged to raise a specifi c

amount of money, strongly

suggested that we each make a

contribution.

— a 33-year-old George Bush donor from New York.

“

”


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.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | PAGE 25

www.IPDI.org

DONOR MOTIVATIONS

We now move from questions that asked about the fi rst donation to questions that address donor motivations overall. What motivates donors to give? Any discussion about why people gave money to the presidential campaigns in 2004 must begin with the observation that this was primarily an election about President George W. Bush. Democrats were strongly dissatisfi ed with the incumbent and Republicans supported him. The most frequent unsolicited comments in personal interviews with Democrats concerned animosity toward President Bush and a desire to defeat him in the election. While dislike for John Kerry was also voiced by Republican donors, it was mentioned less frequently and with less passion than by those who disliked the president. This partisan divide in 2004 was an important factor in motivating many people to donate (and to vote). All the other reasons for giving money in 2004 must be considered in this context. The sentiment is strongest on the Democratic side, especially among large donors. When asked an open-ended question about why they contributed to a candidate – with no prompting – 44 percent of large donors to Kerry (who gave $500 or more) and 32 percent of small donors to Kerry (who gave $100 or less) had something negative to say about the opposing candidate or party. The animosity toward the opponent was less strong among donors to Bush. We conducted some simple linear regression to tease out which traits were most closely associated with negative feelings toward the opposition. We combined two survey questions where donors could express their dislike for the opposing candidate or party and compared them to other variables. First, we predictably found that people who considered themselves strong party supporters or ideologues were more likely to express negative feelings toward the opposition. Controlling for that variable, we found that Kerry voters were indeed signifi cantly more likely to express negative feelings to the president, reinforcing our fi ndings above.1

The open-ended responses also showed that Bush donors liked their candidate more than Kerry donors.


Bush donors, especially large donors, were more likely than Kerry donors to offer positive comments about Bush and to talk about the president’s character, such as his integrity, honesty or strength. Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror were mentioned less often as a reason for making a donation. When respondents were prompted for a negative response the sentiment was overwhelming. We asked whether “the candidate’s opponent is unacceptable” and about 70 percent of both small and large donors said that was a “very important” factor in their decision to donate. Here we see again that large donors to Kerry were more likely to say that Bush was unacceptable (82 percent, compared to 51 percent of large donors to Bush). This difference was smaller when we look just at the small donors, and this was true of the open-ended responses as well. Both sets of small donors said they found the opposing candidate unacceptable. But about the same number of Bush donors said something positive about their candidate while this was not true of the Kerry donors. This adds some understanding to one of the broad assumptions about the 2004 campaign – that small donors were particularly driven to contribute by their animosity toward the opponent. There was signifi cant donor anger among both small and large donors, but anger toward the opponent was greatest among large donors to John Kerry. One of the beliefs among fundraisers is that big donors return every year regardless of who is running, and are less driven by animosity or partisanship. They “invest” in candidates for business and social reasons. We looked at the 154 donors in our data whose average donation was at least $1,000. They are not essentially different from other large donors.2 Our sample is small here, but we cannot support the assumption that very large donors were different. They expressed just as much animosity toward the opponent as donors who gave less. The next most frequent reasons cited by 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.” These percentages are close to the other donor groups.

| DONOR MOTIVATIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

were leadership traits and the positions of the candidates, such as their ideology or their positions on economic, social and moral issues. More than half of the respondents cite these factors as very important. Scholars have identifi ed several broad types of motives that infl uence political activists and donors. The most prevalent are purposive motives, where donors give money because they want to encourage the adoption of policies and candidates with which they agree.3 It appears that small donors are more likely to cite purposive motives for their donations: They are more ideological and issue driven. Donors with material motives try to encourage candidates who they think will be benefi cial to their business or fi nancial status. We see this much less frequently. The sentiment is strongest among donors to President Bush, who are more likely to give money because “the candidate will treat my business fairly.” Finally, donors with solidary motives give because of social benefi ts such as meeting candidates or attending political events. This appears even less frequently than other motives – less than 5 percent of donors found these “very important.” Many fundraising professionals have adopted the terms ideologues, investors, and intimates to make largely the same distinction between donors. Bush donors are more likely to cite the candidate’s liberalism or conservatism (presumably conservatism). They are also more likely to say that President Bush was strongest for their party and was a good leader, refl ecting the more positive opinions Bush donors offered for their candidate. Kerry donors are more likely to say they gave because their candidate was likely to win. This response may be due to supporters of other candidates rallying around Kerry as it became clear he would become the nominee. Kerry donors were also more likely to donate as a way to infl uence government policies, which may indicate discontent over the war in Iraq. Finally, we conducted statistical analyses to tease out some of the relationships among donor characteristics, motivation and size of donation. Did big donors give money to promote business? Are small donors more interested in the candidate’s views? First, we sorted the questions into three related groups. Most people answered these questions consistently. The fi rst index was comprised of questions about the candidate’s views – the conservatism/liberalism and the economic, social and moral views of the 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 income donors, but the driving force here was ideology. The second index was comprised of questions about the social and business reasons to contribute to a candidate – enjoying social contacts, attending events, and the belief that the candidate could help your business. These are

3 Francia et al., “Individual Donors in the 1996 Federal Elections.”

Table 21Percentage who made a positive comment about their candidate/party



Bush donors 56 % 62 %Kerry donors 46 % 35 %

Table 23Percentage who mentioned Iraq or terrorism




Table 20Percentage who made a negative comment about the opposing candidate/party




Table 22Percentage who mention integrity, honesty or strength of their candidate




Thinking about the presidential candidate to whom you contributed the most money, please tell us why you contributed to this candidate

Though tiny, my contributions

were meant as a signal of

encouragement to that rarest of

candidates, an honest man.

— a 60-year-old Ralph Nader donor.

“”

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | DONOR MOTIVATIONS | PAGE 27

www.IPDI.org

solidary and material motives We expected that big donors or high-income donors would be more likely to cite these reasons, but surprisingly they did not do so. Finally, we created a third index of pragmatic questions. People who answered affi rmatively to these questions said they contributed because “the candidate is likely to win” or is “strongest for my party.” They were practical considerations. Here we see that how much money someone donated was important, but only slightly so. This suggests that people who give more might be more likely to consider whether their money is well spent on a winner, and less likely to invest in a losing cause. But this is not the most important factor here; ideology is again most important, and Kerry voters were most likely to give these responses. These results may partly be due to the fact that all of Kerry’s small donors in our sample came from other candidates’ matching fund submission fi les, but we fi nd at least as much instrumental giving among Kerry’s large donors as among the small ones.4

Summary We see little evidence to support the concern that small donors tend to be more polarized and more negative than large donors. Large donors to George


Bush scored lower on the questions about animosity than did either set of small donors, but Kerry’s small donors were more negative than Bush’s and large donors to Kerry were the most negative of the four groups. Large donors to Bush scored higher on some of the material motives (“the candidate will treat my business fairly”), which might be expected. At the same time, in the regression analysis income did not predict these material responses. So while large donors to President Bush (giving $500 or more) were more likely to report these motives, income alone is not the driving factor. We also note the positive reasons donors offered. Large donors to President Bush were the most likely of all donors to give a positive comment about the president. Large donors to John Kerry were the least likely to offer a positive comment about their candidate (and most likely to offer a negative comment about the opponent). In general, donors mostly mentioned the candidates’ political views as their reasons for donating money. These are people with purposive motives, or what some fundraisers call ideologues. The social aspects of making a contribution fell far behind, such as giving money to attend events or meet people. As we saw in the regression analysis, partisanship drives purposive motives. Kerry donors were more likely to give pragmatic responses, especially saying “the candidate is likely to

Table 24Why Donors Give


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 %


| DONOR MOTIVATIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

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 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 contributed because of their positive feelings toward a candidate, especially those who voted for President Bush. Coupled with this is the large portion of donors who cite their candidate’s political philosophy and positions on the issues. The more ideologically extreme they were the more likely they were to cite these purposive reasons. 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, but donors to President Bush cited these reasons. At the same time, donors who earned more money or donated larger amounts (two things that are closely related) were 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 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 wanted a candidate’s positions heard, even if they did not fully support those positions. They gave money as a protest 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 money to a political candidate.

Although Howard Dean would

have been my fi rst choice, the

largest part of my contributions

went to John Kerry because I

strongly wanted President Bush

to be defeated.

— a 77-year-old John Kerry donor from Maryland.

“

”

My motivating, the whole

drive, was to try and identify

a candidate who had the best

likelihood of beating George

Bush.— a 52-year-old John Kerry donor

from Ohio.

“”

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ONLINE BEHAVIOR | PAGE 29

www.IPDI.org

ONLINE BEHAVIOR

Donors are wired. Ninety-six percent of large donors and 82 percent of small donors have gone online.1 As we saw earlier, they have taken to online giving very quickly, and they use the Internet to obtain political information. Donors look for political information at online news sites, party Web sites and political blogs. As we might expect, donors are much more likely than typical Internet users to look for political information online, and about twice as likely to visit their candidate’s Web site.2 All these activities are closely related, so people who visited a political discussion group, for example, were likely to visit a political news site or blog. Interestingly, there is a high correlation between visiting the Web site of your candidate and visiting the opponent’s Web site.3

Small donors and large donors are very similar regarding these online information-seeking activities, although large donors are a little more active online. Because of our special interest in online behavior, we again used linear regression to see which factors were related to seeking out information online by visiting political and news Web sites, chat rooms and blogs.4 We created a single index from six questions about online political activity to create a single measure of seeking political information online. Our strategy was to remove the infl uence of demographic variables and then see whether political party and donation size mattered. The results were largely as we expected. Younger people and Democrats were more likely to look for political information online, but age was really the strongest infl uence. This corresponds with what we know about the campaign. Early Dean supporters were more likely to be online and later Kerry supporters were more likely to donate online. IPDI has found that the online political discussion community in 2003 was dominated by Dean supporters, and we see evidence of

1 To determine if respondents had gone online they were asked “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 Press, 2005).

3 For all donors, Pearson’s correlation coeffi cient of .578, p < .001.


that again here.5

Finally, income and the size of the donation did not infl uence whether someone looked for political information online. The barriers to entry are very low for online information-seeking, and the likelihood of a donor using the Internet for political information is not affected by how much money the household earns. The Internet levels the playing fi eld a bit between small donors and large donors, who otherwise would have greater resources at their disposal to obtain political information. We also note that donating online is strongly related to online information gathering. The 2004 election marked the fi rst national election with the widespread use of political e-mail to organize supporters and solicit contributions. Both parties sent out millions of e-mails to enormous mailing lists. IPDI collected more than 900 different e-mails sent from the two major campaigns and national parties in the last six months of the campaign. (The Institute’s database of political e-mails during the election, which is hardly comprehensive, includes state party and 527 organization e-mail, and numbers more than 5,000 pieces from the last six months of the campaign.) This e-mail coverage saturated the donor base – 80 percent of donors got political e-mail. In fact, people who did not donate online often told us – both in the survey and in interviews later – that they did not do so for fear of giving out personal information and getting spammed. Democrats were more likely to get lots of e-mail: 45 percent of Democrat large donors and 35 percent of Democrat small donors got political e-mail “almost every day.” The same factors were at play here, including the active online campaigns in the primaries and the emphasis on online donations by the Kerry campaign. Republicans were much less likely to get that much e-mail. 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 to the campaign as donating money, it is nonetheless

5 Joseph Graf et al., “Working Paper: Online Political Discussion Groups in the 2004 Presidential Campaign: A Pilot Study Survey of Discussion Group Leaders,” (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004), Graf and Darr, “Politi-cal Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign.”

www.IPDI.org

PAGE 30 | ONLINE BEHAVIOR | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

a means by which interested citizens advertised their political positions and sought support for their candidates. Campaigns and advocacy groups have made a special effort to encourage their supporters to e-mail others. On the campaign Web sites the process was automated. Online donors were far more likely to forward e-mail. Among people who received e-mail, 70 percent of online donors admitted they forwarded some along to others. Small donors do so as frequently as large donors. If they received e-mail, Democrats and Republicans were just as likely to forward it.

Summary Obtaining political information is the fi rst step toward becoming an engaged citizen: education, media use and political knowledge are indicators of political involvement. But obtaining information costs time and money, and researchers for years have argued that those with resources – usually the well-off – can spend the time and money to learn about politics. We suggest that the Internet reduces that barrier to entry. Small donors can get political information online as readily as large donors, and political e-mail is a means for them to stay informed and easily communicate with others.

Table 25Online Activity


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 26Percentage who received political e-mail “almost every day”




Table 27Percentage who have forwarded political e-mail to someone else




NOTE: Of respondents who received e-mail.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | PAGE 31

www.IPDI.org

Making a political contribution is an act of political participation, much like planting a political sign in the front yard or voting, but it is an act that has obvious costs. Few Americans are willing to take the effort to contribute to a campaign, and those who do are engaged in their communities in myriad ways. They participate locally and are infl uential among their friends and neighbors. “Infl uentials” is a term adopted by RoperASW to describe the small segment of the general public that is disproportionately infl uential with everyone else.1 The defi ning characteristic of infl uentials is their activist orientation toward life, and it can apply to many different things. Infl uentials are the people who recommend to their friends music, movies or restaurants. They collect information and opinions about the things important in their lives, and they communicate that information to networks of friends, family and colleagues. Their infl uence is disproportionate because of the number of people they communicate with and the degree to which others turn to them for advice and information. Prior research at IPDI has found that political activists online early in the 2004 presidential campaign tended to be infl uentials. Nearly 70 percent of these online activists qualifi ed as infl uentials, in contrast to 10 percent of the general public.2 Political donors were much more likely to be infl uentials, and large donors were only slightly more likely than small donors to be infl uentials. Donors are far more likely than the general public to be involved in communication activities (writing letters to politicians and the media) and political activism (joining parties or advocacy groups and attending political functions). When it comes to some activities that require much more commitment, such as holding offi ce or making a speech, donors are more like regular citizens. Only a

1 Ed Keller and Jon Berry, The Infl uentials (NewYork: The Free Press, 2003). Infl uentials are determined by their responses to 11 ques-tions about political activity. See question 25 of the survey in ap-pendix B.

2 Graf and Darr, “Political Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presiden-tial Campaign.”

very few people are committed to their community to that degree. Having Internet access helps. Small donors with Internet access are nearly as likely as large donors to score high on the index and be considered infl uentials. Small donors generally fall behind large donors in their rate of volunteering. About 60 percent of large donors and 45 percent of small donors have been political volunteers at one time or another. It is interesting, however, that only about 12 percent of large donors are “hard-core” volunteers who show up in most elections. We saw above that most donors are, at times, non-donors. They do not give in every election, but pick and choose. Here we see that they pick and choose in their volunteering as well. There are elections where large donors – active in their communities – nonetheless choose to remain on the sidelines. Donors were actively involved in other ways by asking others to support or give money to a candidate. This activity may be the most important to political campaigns. Personal infl uence is powerful. Campaigns know this, and they focused on enormous grassroots efforts in the 2004 election. More than a third of large donors said they asked someone else to contribute, twice as many as the small donors. Donors respond to these personal requests. As we saw earlier, large donors move in networks of donors who get asked to make donations and ask others to give. There is an important pattern among small donors who donate online. Their level of political activity – soliciting others or attending social events – is much closer to that of large donors. Being politically active online (illustrated by their willingness to donate online) closes the gap in political involvement between large and small donors. The Internet makes it easier to ask someone else to support your candidate and to ask for money. Asking someone online is less confrontational than doing so in person, and the campaigns made it easy to solicit friends with boilerplate e-mails, phone lists and other tools on their Web sites. We found this combination to be particularly intriguing and hopeful regarding the question of whether the Internet is helping to further democratize electoral politics.

POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT

| POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

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 a candidate, much more than small donors. Both campaigns used online tools to try to facilitate house parties. While large donors used house parties, small donors and online donors were more drawn to Meetups. Meetup events are advertised and organized online, and Howard Dean supporters were early and enthusiastic users of the Meetup events (although Meetup.com is nonpartisan). 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 hosted where money was not solicited or parties became regular social events. In one case a donor talked about his efforts to invite activists on both sides for a conciliatory, nonpartisan political house party immediately after the election. House parties also may have been an avenue into 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.

Summary The data show that the Internet is leveling the playing fi eld. Small donors lack the resources and social networks that large donors have, but the Internet in 2004 helped connect them in ways that made up for fewer resources. Online small donors are just as likely as large donors to try to convince someone to support their candidate, and 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 community. Roughly 30 percent of donors who asked others to donate said they asked more than 20 people. These “activist donors” appear equally among small and large donors. Most people further reported they contacted others in person or by phone. If we just pull out these “activist donors” who contacted many others, we fi nd that only a 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).

Table 29Percentage who solicited money for a candidate from someone else




Table 28Percentage who tried to convince someone to support their candidate




Table 30Percentage who attended a Meetup.com event




Table 31Percentage who attended a house party




SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT | PAGE 33

www.IPDI.org

infl uence with others by asking them to donate. Infl uentials are three times more likely to ask someone else to donate, 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

4 See Grant Reeher, Larry Elin, and Steve Davis, The Political Life of the Internet (New York: New York University Press, forthcoming).

Table 32Frequency of volunteering in presidential elections



Most elections 6 % 12 %Some elections 21 % 32 %One election 18 % 19 %Never 55 % 38 %

Figure 3

Percentage of donors who are infl uentials

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

10%

53%62%

Figure 4

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

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

66%

44%

69%

56%HAVEACCESS

HAVEACCESS

| ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | PAGE 35

www.IPDI.org

We now turn to donors’ attitudes toward current issues, their partisanship, and their feelings toward campaign fi nance. For most of these questions we did not expect much difference between online and offl ine donors. For example, we did not believe that online donors would be more likely to support the death penalty than offl ine donors, and they did not. However, we were unsure whether there would be ideological differences between small donors and large donors. The increase in donors was due in part to a polarizing election, but we did not know if small donors were more likely to be strongly partisan. Finally, we certainly expected differences based on political orientation. Consequently, much of this analysis centers on differences between Democrats and Republicans. Political donors are deeply divided, both on ideology and on the issues. Political donors are very likely to identify themselves as “strong” party members or “strong” liberals or conservatives, as have political donors in past elections.1 Whereas most of the general public clusters in the middle of the political or ideological axis, most donors place themselves toward the poles. There was a wide gulf between Bush and Kerry donors on a variety of social issues. In some cases, the differences between each side on issues such as gay marriage were enormous. For example, whereas 74 percent of the Bush donors agreed with the statement “Government should enact laws to restrict gay marriage,” 90 percent of Kerry donors disagreed. We see similar wide disagreement when respondents were asked questions about reducing taxes, allowing people to invest some Social Security funds, providing health insurance for the uninsured, making the death penalty mandatory, and spending more to reduce poverty. The differences were greatest on gay marriage, and the smallest divide was for the death penalty. But even here, more than 55 percent of Bush donors agreed the death penalty should be mandatory, compared to less than 10 percent of the Kerry donors. Large and small donors differed on two social issues. Here we analyzed Bush and Kerry donors separately to

1 Brown, Powell, and Wilcox, Serious Money: Fundraising and Con-tributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns.

control for partisanship. Small donors were more likely than large donors to agree that “government should enact laws to restrict gay marriage” and “mandatory death penalty for murder should be the law.” Small donors and large donors did not differ on the other economic and social issues of whether “government should provide health insurance for the uninsured” or whether “government should spend more money to reduce poverty.” Bush donors and Kerry donors still are far apart on these issues, but within each group, small donors are more socially conservative than large donors on these issues. Among donors to John Kerry, small donors differed from large donors on the statement “taxes should be cut even if it means reducing public services.” Small donors to Kerry, while still tending to disagree with that statement, were nonetheless more conservative in their overall response. Here small donors appear to be more economically conservative on this issue.2

Finally, we looked at two questions that address polarization. Small donors to Bush are no more likely than large donors to Bush to be party ideologues and place themselves at the end of the party spectrum. This was also true of Kerry donors. However, we found that small donors were generally more conservative than large donors when we asked them to place themselves on an ideological scale from “strong conservative” to “strong liberal.” Again, Bush donors and Kerry donors are far apart on this scale, but within each group, small donors consider themselves more conservative than large donors.

Alienation and Cynicism The subtext of American political campaigns is cynicism, and this is no more evident than in online communications. With Web sites and e-mail the parties have the capability to communicate rapidly in a personalized manner with their core, the volunteers and fundraisers who make up the grassroots. Based on the thousands of pieces of political e-mail collected by IPDI, much of this communication is cynical and negative.

2 Mean scores were compared using one-way ANOVA and all rela-tionships were signifi cant at p < .05 or better.

ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS

| ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

Political donors were generally fairly negative about 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, and especially so when asked whether “the United States 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.” (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 with alienation from government and politicians. This index included questions about whether politicians do the right thing or whether government is responsive to the people. However, the questions were more broad and less partisan.3 We again fi nd that the supporters of the party out of power are more alienated than Bush supporters, but this is unrelated to whether the donor was a small or large donor. Small donors are no more or less alienated than large donors.

The campaign fi nance system The passage of campaign fi nance reform in 2002 was the culmination of a long political fi ght that included years of lobbying and research by public interest organizations, nonprofi t foundations and political groups. In waging 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 campaign for the presidency. This heightened awareness showed up in the attitudes donors had toward campaign fi nance reform in research conducted on the 1996 and 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 more in favor of reform than the general public, especially banning soft money and limiting campaign spending. Even though there were differences along party lines, there had 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 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 the Democrats. They were much more extreme in their dislike of the campaign fi nance system and their desire for change. More than 40 percent of Democrats who contributed $500 or more gave the most critical response.

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.”

Figure 5Donor attitudes

Strongly Agree Strongly Disagree

34%

1% 1%

62%

“Taxes should be cut even if it means reducing public services”


62%

1% 2%

45%

“People should be able to invest some Social Security funds”


46%

2% 5%

73%

“Government should enact laws to restrict gay marriage”

NOTE: Bars represent percentages of Kerry and Bush donors.



SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS | PAGE 37

www.IPDI.org

Only a small percentage claimed the system was sound – about 5 percent of Republicans and less than 1 percent of Democrats. These results are similar to the discontent seen in surveys of presidential donors in 2000. So far, the 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 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 campaign fi nance together with their own negative feelings about politics in general, especially gerrymandered political districting, which was mentioned by several donors. (This survey was conducted before the Jack Abramoff scandal 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 our mailed questionnaire, several donors called to express 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 an infringement on personal privacy.5

Summary Whereas many Americans fall in the middle of the political spectrum, donors congregate toward the ends. Many consider themselves strong conservatives/liberals or strong Democrats/Republicans. They are also deeply divided along a range of social issues, such as the death 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 place themselves in a more conservative position on an 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 passage of campaign fi nance reform in 2002, donors remain unhappy with campaign fi nance regulations and are suspicious about reform.

5 Julie Hinds, “Campaign Cash: It’s on the Web: Who Gave What to Whom,” Detroit Free Press, 12 April 2004, Knight Ridder News Service, “Campaign Donation Site Points to Giver,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 April 2004, Leslie Walker, “Political Money, Tracked to Your Door,” The Washington Post, 28 March 2004.

Figure 6Donor attitudes


3%

50%

15%

2%

“Government should provide health insurance for the uninsured”


26%

2% 6%

53%

“Mandatory death penalty for murder should be the law”


2%

47%

20%

1%

“Government should spend more to reduce poverty in the U.S.”

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







| FIRST-TIME DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | FIRST-TIME DONORS | PAGE 39

www.IPDI.org

FIRST-TIME DONORS

The surge in donors in the 2004 campaign was almost universally praised as one of the few positive aspects of a negative campaign. As we have discussed elsewhere, there is a consensus that more donors is a sign of a healthy democracy. However, one concern about this increase in donors was whether they would be more polarized or ideologically extreme. Here we examined whether these new donors differ from donors who have given in the past. In trying to estimate how many donors were fi rst-time donors we looked at only those donors who gave $200 or more in order to compare the data to past surveys. Eighteen percent of donors who gave $200 or more said that their donation in the 2004 election was the fi rst time they had ever given money to a candidate or political party. This is roughly similar to estimates from the 2000 election. Data from donors who gave $200 or more in 2000 suggest that roughly 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 presidential candidate for the fi rst time.1

This suggests that the proportion of large donors who gave for the fi rst time in 2004 was roughly the same, or maybe even a little less, than in 2000. We know that the total number of donors at least tripled from 2000 to 2004. So while many donors were giving for the fi rst time, many occasional federal donors who did not give to a presidential candidate in 2000 were motivated to do so in 2004. As we found earlier, many donors are not habitual donors, so they give in one election and not in another. The 2004 campaign motivated many non-donors and these irregular donors to make a contribution in this election cycle. Our data suggest that there was a higher proportion of fi rst-time donors among people who considered themselves independents than those who said they were Democrats or Republicans. About 30 percent of independent donors were fi rst-time donors. First-time donors were not any more or less ideological

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-ham, Md: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003).

than other donors, controlling for the candidate’s party (i.e. among Bush donors, fi rst-time donors were no more conservative than past donors; and among Kerry donors, fi rst-time donors were no more liberal than past donors). If we compare just Democrats and Republicans, we fi nd there were more fi rst-time donors among the Democrats than Republicans. However, if we compared just Bush and Kerry donors the difference disappears, suggesting that the other Democratic candidates drew in more new voters. Our observations here are limited by the scope of our data, but they nonetheless generally fi t assumptions about the campaign. It appears new donors were disproportionately independent, but perhaps in name only. First-time donors are no different on the liberal-conservative continuum than other donors who give money to the party’s candidates. The Democrats candidates who did not win the nomination attracted new donors to the campaign.2

Demographics First-time donors were more likely to have been women, supporting the fi nding that more women appeared in our donor survey than past ones. First-time donors are also generally younger and earn less money than people who have given in the past. While the age difference between fi rst-time donors and other large donors is signifi cant, fi rst-time donors are hardly as young as the popular media would suggest. About half of new donors are over age 50. Finally, fi rst-time donors are more likely to give online – 74 percent of large donors (over $500) and 60 percent of small donors (under $100) who are giving for the fi rst time did so online.

The Dynamics of Giving for First-time Donors First-time donors are usually not on the campaign 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

2 All relationships signifi cant at p < .01 using ANOVA with post-hoc comparisons.

www.IPDI.org

PAGE 40 | FIRST-TIME DONORS | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

campaign. As we saw earlier, direct mail still plays a prominent role in reaching donors, and that’s true for new donors as well. However, new donors are disproportionately being solicited by e-mail. This means that a lot of e-mail addresses were collected by the campaigns before the fi rst donation, such as when people submit their e-mail address in order to get information from the campaign or to sign an online petition. Nonetheless, small donors are clearly less likely to be asked to give money, especially with the personal requests that are so effective. The donors who have given before are more likely to get a call from the campaign, which we should expect, but they are also 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 donate, as opposed to 38 percent of large donors who have given in the past. Regular donors are in a social network of donors that provides prompting for the next donation. As we said earlier, an adage of fundraising is that a fi rst time donor is a one-time donor. That sentiment is supported here. First-time donors are less likely to say they plan to donate or volunteer in 2008. The results also support the thesis that fi rst-time donors were more

likely to donate because of their attraction to a political candidate, as opposed to generally wanting to support the party or get involved in the political process. When ask if they planned to donate in 2008 “regardless of who is running,” they were less likely to agree. Only about 10 percent of fi rst-time donors volunteered in a presidential election anytime prior to the 2004 election, compared to about 40 percent of everyone else. This suggests these donors are being brought into the political system for the fi rst time, and it also suggests that for fi rst-time donors the route to political volunteering lies through donating, and not vice versa. They did not begin as volunteers and then graduate into the donor class.

Motivations, Attitudes and Opinions While fi rst-time donors to John Kerry were motivated to donate by animosity toward the president, this was not signifi cantly more than past donors to Kerry. As we saw in an earlier analysis, being a fi rst-time donor was not a predictor of making a negative comment about the opponent. In other words, animosity motivated all Kerry donors, not just the new ones. Finally, the war in Iraq and terrorism were not signifi cantly more of a motivation for fi rst-time Kerry donors.

Table 34Demographic profi le of fi rst-time donors and past donors


First-time All others First-time All others

Gender

Male 52 % 62 % 46 % 60 %

Female 48 % 38 % 54 % 40 %

Age

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

Table 35Percentage of fi rst-time donors who gave online


less


moreFirst-time donors

60 % 74 %

Past donors 40 % 52 %

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | FIRST-TIME DONORS | PAGE 41

www.IPDI.org

Summary The polarizing election of 2004 motivated both people who were giving for the fi rst time and people who had given in the past. Both new donors and intermittent donors showed up at the party. It appears that the Democratic candidates – probably Howard Dean especially – attracted more new 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 educated and less wealthy than donors who have given in the past. The pool of fi rst-time donors is almost half women, supporting our observation that more women are entering the donor pool. First-time donors are more likely than past donors to give online. They are less likely to have been asked to donate, especially by friends and family members. And as we would expect, fi rst-time donors are less committed to returning as donors or volunteers in 2008.

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

First-time donors Past donors


Table 36Percentage who made a negative comment about the opposing candidate/party



Table 39Percentage who mentioned Iraq or terrorism



Thinking about the presidential candidate to

whom you contributed the most money, please tell us

why you contributed to this candidate

Table 37Percentage who made a positive comment about the opposing candidate/party



| CONCLUSION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | CONCLUSION | PAGE 43

www.IPDI.org

CONCLUSION

Researchers have known for years that people who make large donations to a federal candidate come from a socioeconomic elite. The donor pool is dramatically wealthier and more highly educated than the general public. Few people with low incomes or little education give money, and they do not give much. The major questions we had were whether the huge upsurge in the number of small donors and Internet donors in 2004 would alter the picture. It turns out that it does – somewhat. Small donors stand somewhere between the pool of large donors and the general public. They are still wealthier and more highly educated than the general public, but substantially less so than large donors. Small donors are also both older and younger. The average age of the small donor is older than the average for large donors, but the small donor pool is made up of more old and young voters than the traditional pool of $200-plus donors. We were also concerned whether small donors and Internet donors would be more polarized than other donors. This concern was based on a great deal of conventional wisdom about what makes for a successful small donor fundraising appeal through direct mail. It turns out that the small donors in our sample were neither angrier nor more polarized than large donors. They were no more likely than large donors to express animosity toward the opposing candidate. And while small donors were a little more conservative on some social issues, they were not extremists. We fi nd no evidence to support the fear that larger numbers of small donors in the political process would somehow be destabilizing or polarizing. However, despite the infl ux of small donors, the bulk of campaign money continues to come to candidates in large contributions raised from a socioeconomic elite. People who typically function in elite circles simply fi nd it easier to become involved personally and it is easier for solicitors to fi nd them. Campaign fundraisers are what political scientists call “rational prospectors.” Like 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 the same time, old donors recruit new donors from their friends and colleagues, who look just like they do. They go to college, have well-paying jobs and meet

in the same social circles. With a less motivating or polarizing election in the future, large and small donors may not appear again in the same numbers as they did in 2004, but the fundraisers will continue to fi nd it easier to prospect for the large donors. As a result, vast segments of the American population are not well represented among political donors. It is a gross misstatement to say that their money is not welcome – candidates will gladly take their money – but the campaigns have not been looking for it (or at least not as hard). The costs are too great for campaign fundraisers with limited resources to spend much time and money looking for donors among young people and the less educated. Certainly some people from these segments of society donate to presidential campaigns, but the system is stacked against them. They have little chance to meet a candidate and to have their picture taken standing alongside. They are less likely to get phone calls or letters that provide the critical prompting to donate. And they don’t have the social pressures from their friends or colleagues. The question is whether the campaign of 2004 gives us reason to believe this portrait may change. Certainly, the 2004 election paints a portrait of the presidential donor pool as more fl uid than we used to believe. Most large donors in 2000 did not return to donate in 2004, and most donors tell us that they are, at times, non-donors. People opt in to and out of politics to a greater degree than we used to think, depending on their motivations and dispositions for each election. The number of donors at least tripled from 2000 to 2004, but the proportion of new donors was not dramatically higher. That means a lot of old donors re-entered politics in 2004. BCRA did permit presidential campaigns to get those people who gave $1,000 in the last election to give $2,000 this time, and the national parties and campaign committees did.1 This is hardly broadening the donor base. But BCRA and the presidential campaign laws also led the campaigns and the national parties

1 Congressional committees were generally not as successful. See Anthony Corrado, “Party Finance in the Wake of BCRA: An Over-view,” in The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, ed. Michael J. Malbin (Lanham, Md.: Row-man & Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming)).

| CONCLUSION | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

to expand their donor lists. If they hope to compete in 2008 and beyond they will have to continue to prospect hard for new donors. The Internet has made it easier to do this. By one estimate, the cost of raising money online is one-fi fth the cost of raising money by telemarketing or direct mail. The big money fundraising dinner brings in a lot of money, but it also costs a lot. This decline in the costs of fi nding donors means that it is more worthwhile to solicit money from e-mail lists of names that in the past would have been a much less profi table undertaking. (This suggests how valuable good lists of donors can be.) The Internet was infl uential in leveling the playing fi eld between small donors and large donors. This is not due to any single online activity, but rather the integration of online and offl ine methods and the infl uence of many different online practices on individual

behavior. The broader patterns of the 2004 campaign provided the opportunities for these changes. A lot of fundraising moved online, direct mail and e-mail appeals grew exponentially and the number of donors exploded. The Internet then made it easier for small donors to contact the campaign before being solicited (and many did). Internet donors were more likely to forward political e-mail, to ask someone to support their candidate or to ask someone to donate money. They more readily would link up with other supporters at house parties or Meetups. And people who were online were much more likely to be infl uential with their friends and neighbors. We believe the combination of these forces will be instrumental in future campaigns, and we hope that this can help bring to campaign fundraising a richer social and political diversity that marks the American political system at its best.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | APPENDICES | PAGE 45

www.IPDI.org

APPENDIX A – METHODOLOGY The Small Donors Survey was conducted from July 1 to November 30, 2005. Most potential survey respondents were fi rst sent a letter telling them that a mailed survey would be forthcoming in a few days. Potential respondents then received the survey itself about a week later. A follow-up reminder card was sent to those who did not respond about three weeks after that. Most of those who did not respond received a second copy of the survey between four and eight weeks after the initial survey was sent. About 6,477 people were sampled. Of those, 600 surveys were returned due to incorrect addresses and 17 surveys were returned because the potential respondent had died. The total response rate calculated by removing these surveys from the total mailed was 27 percent. In each mailing to respondents we included the address of a Web site where respondents could take the survey online. Multi-modal surveys have a unique set of considerations that we needed to take into account. We encouraged respondents to take the survey online to reduce the labor costs of inputting the data from mailed surveys and the postage costs of surveys returned to the institute via business reply mail. The online survey was identical in look to the mailed 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 respondents with the paper copy could immediately tell it was 16 pages. We received several complaints that the survey was too long from both online and offl ine respondents. Nonetheless, we thought the response online was good and we believe giving respondents the online option improved the overall response rate. In the end, 428 valid surveys (or 27 percent of the total) were received online and 1,153 were received by mail. Our sample of donors is composed of a random sample of 3,000 donors who gave more than $200 (large donors) and 3,480 donors who gave less (small donors). The names of large donors are publicly 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 at random from all donors to the 2004 presidential campaigns who gave $200 or more. The names of small donors were drawn from lists of small donors submitted to the FEC by the six Democratic candidates and one independent candidate who fi led for matching funds – Wesley Clark, John Edwards, Richard Gephardt, Joe Lieberman, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich and Ralph Nader. We also obtained a sample of 1,200 names of small donors to President Bush’s campaign from his Web site. The Bush campaign listed the names 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 and supplied to the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet.

The Small Donors Project also conducted telephone interviews with 31 donors from June 1 to November 30, 2005, although most of the interviews were conducted in August. The fi rst four interviews were used for pretesting the script and contacted through acquaintances with a snowball sample, so they did not complete the small donors survey. The remaining subjects were contacted after they had completed the survey and indicated a willingness to speak with a researcher. Subjects were contacted by e-mail and if they responded affi rmatively an effort was made to reach them by telephone. Most interviews were between 10 and 20 minutes long. After the fi rst 20 interviews an effort was made to oversample Bush donors in order to obtain a more representative sample of donors. The scope of the interview script generally expanded as the interviews progressed. It typically began with basic questions about interest in and involvement with the campaign and then moved to specifi c question about how and why donations to candidates or parties were made. Several variations on the question script probed the issue of online donations, campaign volunteering, opinions toward the campaign fi nance system and online media habits. All the interviews were recorded and then transcribed, amounting to more than 150 pages of transcribed interviews.

Religious Survey data Data for the religious questions were obtained from the Pew Research Center. The survey concerning church attendance was conducted in August 2004 and asked, “Aside from weddings and funerals, how often do you attend religious services? More than once a week, once or twice a month, a few times a year, seldom, or never?” The question concerning importance of religion in one’s life was conducted in July 2005 and asked “How important would you say religion is in your own life? Very important, fairly important or not very important.”1 Response categories were collapsed to create logical comparisons across surveys.

Open-ended Question Coding Three open-ended survey questions were coded. The fi rst two questions involved why respondents contributed to a candidate and what prompted their fi rst contribution. The fi rst question was “Thinking about the presidential candidate you contributed the most money to, please tell us why you contributed to this candidate?” The second question, which immediately followed the fi rst in the questionnaire, was “Was there something specifi c that prompted you to make your fi rst contribution, such as an advertisement,

1 Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, Religion a Strength and Weakness for Both Parties [Online report] (30 August 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]); available from www.people-press.org/reports.

| APPENDICES | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

conversation or news story?” The response categories were not mutually exclusive. Responses were compared to the respondents’ voting choice, which we considered their “preferred” candidate. The categories were:

1. Any mention of the opponent or opposition party, either explicitly or more implicitly, such as “the opposing party” or “the opposition.”

2. Any negative mention of the opponent or opposition party. This requires any mention such as #1 above, plus any indicator that the reference is negative or derogatory.

3. Any mention of the preferred candidate or party.

4. Any positive mention of the preferred candidate or party.

5. Any mention of the War in Iraq. This would include the terms Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, or war on Terrorism.

6. Any mention of the following positive values of the preferred candidate or party: integrity, 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 coder. Those results were then compared for intercoder reliability. The third question was simply the open-ended responses to the question of “occupation” in the demographic question battery. Responses were typically limited to one word or a short phrase. They were coded into four categories: retired, health professions, legal professions and education professions. These categories were also not mutually exclusive. Someone who responded “retired teacher,” for example, would have been coded as both retired and in an education profession.

Hierarchical Regression Analyses For most of the hierarchical regression analysis, the predictor variables were typically regressed in the following blocks: (1) age, education, income and a dummy variable for gender; (2) strength of ideology, created by combining responses to questions on party affi liation and conservative-liberal ideology and “folded over” to make it a strength of ideology scale ranging from zero to six; (3) variable of zero or 1 for John Kerry voters; (4) the amount of money the donor contributed; (5) variable of zero or 1 for fi rst-time donors; and (6) variable of zero or 1 for online donors. All statistical tables are available online (www.ipdi.org) or from the fi rst author.

Predicting negative comments toward an opponent The analysis was done by regressing a two-question

index that measured degree of dislike for the opposing candidate against the predictor variables. The dependent variable was created using two questions at two different points in the survey that both used fi ve-point response categories from “very important” to “not at all important.” The fi rst question was “How important were these issues in making your choice for president? – I disliked the other candidate” and the second was “How important were the following factors in your decision to make a contribution to a presidential candidate? – The candidate’s opponent was unacceptable.”

Predicting future donating and volunteering For this analysis two variables were individually regressed against the predictor variables mentioned above. The variables were responses on a fi ve-point scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” to the statements “I plan to donate to the campaign in the 2008 presidential election” and “I plan to volunteer for a campaign in the 2008 presidential election.”

Predicting donor motives Three indices were created from a battery of questions asking for respondents’ motivations for donating. Each question asked respondents to respond to each statement by marking a fi ve-point scale ranging from “very important” to “not at all important.” Questions in each index were determined using a factor analysis that revealed three signifi cant factors.

The fi rst index of solidary/material motives was comprised of responses to the statements “The 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 candidate will treat my business fairly.” Chronbach’s alpha for the index was .74. The second index of purposive motives was comprised of responses to the statements “candidate’s position on economic issues,” “candidate’s views on social/moral issues” and “candidate’s liberalism/conservatism.” Chronbach’s alpha for the index was .50. The third index of pragmatic motives was comprised of responses to the statements “the candidate is likely to win” and “the candidate is strongest for my party.” Pearson’s correlation coeffi cient for the two items was .43 (p < .001). The predictor variables were the same as above.

Cynicism Index We composed an index of an individual’s attitudes toward cynicism with frequently used questions that address cynicism and political effi cacy. We began with asking respondents to mark a fi ve-point scale from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” for the following


www.IPDI.org

six questions.1. Politics works for the benefi t of special interests

rather than the public good.2. Most politicians are willing to tackle the real

problems facing America.3. I generally think that politicians try to do the

right thing.4. People like me have no say about what

government does.5. Sometimes politics seems so complex that I

don’t understand what’s going on.6. Elections make government responsive to the

views of the people.Often these questions are used to identify two concepts, effi cacy and cynicism. However, a factor analysis did not reveal a clear division between the two presumed 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 fairly reliable index (Chronbach’s alpha = .77).

APPENDIX B – VERBATIM QUESTION WORDING OF THE SMALL DONORS SURVEY

1. What are your views about the following statements? (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)

a. Taxes should be cut even if it means reducing public services.

b. People should be able to invest some Social Security funds.

c. The United States is generally headed in the right direction.

d. Government should enact laws to restrict gay marriage.

e. Government should provide health insurance for the uninsured.

f. Mandatory death penalty for murder should be the law.

g. I am worried about the national economy in the next 10 years.

h. Government should spend more to reduce poverty in the U.S.

i. I worry that my children will not have the opportunities I had.

2. Who did you vote for in the presidential election on Nov. 2, 2004?

a. I did not vote.b. George W. Bushc. John Kerryd. Ralph Nader

e. Another candidate

3. How important were these issues in making your choice for president? (5-point scale from “very important” to “not at all important”)

a. Iraq/the warb. Economy/jobsc. Terrorism/securityd. Honesty/integritye. The direction of the countryf. Strength/leadershipg. Social Securityh. I liked my candidatei. I disliked the other candidate

4. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself to be a … (Strong Republican, Independent, Strong Democrat)

5. Do you consider yourself to be a member of a third party?

a. Nob. The Reform Partyc. The Independent Partyd. The Green Partye. The Constitution Partyf. Another third party

6. In the 2004 campaign, did any presidential candidates ask you for money? If so, how did they contact you? Check all that apply. If you were not contacted, just leave blank. (by letter, by phone, by e-mail, in person)

a. Carol Moseley Braun b. George W. Bushc. Wesley Clarkd. Howard Dean e. John Edwardsf. Dick Gephardtg. Bob Grahamh. John Kerryi. Dennis Kucinichj. Joe Liebermank. Ralph Naderl. Al Sharptonm. Any others

7. In the 2004 campaign, did any party organizations ask you for money? Check all that apply. If you were not contacted, just leave blank. (by letter, by phone, by e-mail, in person)

a. Republican National Committeeb. Democratic National Committeec. Republican Senate/House committeesd. Democratic Senate/House committees

8. Generally speaking, how often have you given money to candidates or political parties? (Never, One election, Some elections, Most elections)


www.IPDI.org

a. Presidential candidatesb. Senate/House candidatesc. State/local candidatesd. Political parties

9. During the campaign, did anyone personally ask you to give money to a candidate or party, either in person, by phone or by e-mail?

a. I do not recallb. No c. Yes d. (If yes) Who asked you? Check all that apply.

i. A family memberii. A friend or colleagueiii. A campaign representative

10. Did you ask anyone to give money to a candidate or political party?

a. I do not recallb. No c. Yes d. (If yes) About how many people did you ask?

i. 1 to 3 peopleii. 4 to 9 peopleiii. 10 to 20 peopleiv. More than 20 people

e. How did you usually contact them?i. Talked to in person or by phoneii. Sent a letter or note by postal mailiii. Sent e-mail

11. How many contributions did you make to the following candidates? How much did you give? If you did not donate, just leave blank.

a. Carol Moseley Braun b. George W. Bushc. Wesley Clarkd. Howard Deane. John Edwardsf. Dick Gephardtg. Bob Grahamh. John Kerryi. Dennis Kucinichj. Joe Liebermank. Ralph Naderl. Al Sharptonm. Any others _______

12. How many contributions did you make to the following organizations? How much did you give? If you did not donate, just leave blank.

a. Republican National Committeeb. Democratic National Committeec. Republican Senate/House Committeesd. Democratic Senate/House Committees

13. Was the 2004 election the fi rst time you gave money to a candidate or political party?

a. I do not recallb. Noc. Yes

14. Think back to when you fi rst gave money to a presidential candidate or political party in the 2004 election. When was that fi rst contribution?

a. I do not recallb. Prior to Jan. 19, 2004, before any primaries

were heldc. During the primaries, from January to June

2004d. During the political conventions and debates,

July to October 2004e. In the last week or so before the Nov. 2

election

15. Thinking about the presidential candidate you contributed the most money to, please tell us why you contributed to this candidate? (open-ended)

16. Was there something specifi c that prompted you to make your fi rst contribution, such as an advertisement, conversation or news story? (open-ended)

17. Did any of the following things prompt you to make that fi rst contribution? Check all that apply.

a. I received a letter in the mail from my candidate or party.

b. I received an e-mail from my candidate or party.

c. I received a telephone call from my candidate or party.

d. I saw something during the presidential debates.

e. I saw the candidate in person.f. I saw a political advertisement on TV.g. I saw something in the news on TV.h. I read something in a newspaper or magazine.i. I saw a political video online.j. A family member, friend or colleague

encouraged me to contribute.k. Someone I know told me he or she had made

a contribution.l. I attended a Meetup.com event or a house

party.

18. How much was your fi rst contribution to a campaign in 2004? (open ended)

19. Who did you make that fi rst contribution to?

20. How many times were you contacted by a campaign or political party (such as by phone or mail) before you made that fi rst contribution?

a. None. I was not contacted.b. 1 time


www.IPDI.org

c. 2 or 3 timesd. 4 times or more

21. How many of your contributions were made online using a credit card, debit card, or online check?

a. Allb. Somec. Noned. (If none) Why not? Check all that apply.

i. I do not have Internet access.ii. I do not pay for things online. iii. I do not want to give out personal

information online.

22. How important were the following factors in your decision to make a contribution to a presidential candidate? (5-point scale from “very important” to “not at all important”)

a. The candidate’s liberalism/conservatismb. Candidate’s position on economic issuesc. Candidate’s views on social/moral issuesd. The candidate is likely to win the electione. A group I respect supported the candidatef. The candidate’s opponent is unacceptableg. The candidate is the strongest for my party h. The candidate will treat my business fairlyi. The candidate is a good leader j. As a way to infl uence government policiesk. I enjoy the friendships and social contactsl. The contribution involved an event I wanted

to attendm. The candidate is friendly to my industry or

work

23. When you think about how political campaigns are paid for, which statement best refl ects your view of the campaign fi nance system?

a. It is broken and needs to be replacedb. It has problems and needs to be changedc. It has some problems but is basically soundd. It is all right just the way it is and should not

be changede. I do not know

24. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself to be a … (Strong Conservative, Neutral, Strong Liberal)

25. Here is a list of things some people do about government or politics. Please indicate if you have done any of these in the past year. Check all that apply.

a. Written or called any politician at the state, local or national level

b. Attended a political rally, speech, or organized protest of any kind

c. Attended a public meeting on town or school affairs

d. Held or run for political offi cee. Served on a committee for some local

organizationf. Served as an offi cer for some club or

organizationg. Signed a petitionh. Worked for a political partyi. Made a speechj. Written an article for a magazine or

newspaperk. Written a letter to the editor to a newspaper

or magazine or called a live radio or TV show to express an opinion

l. Been an active member of any group that tries to infl uence public policy or government

26. How much do you agree or disagree with these statements? (strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree)

a. I plan to donate to a campaign in the 2008 presidential election.

b. I plan to donate to a campaign in the 2008 presidential election, regardless of who is running.

c. I plan to volunteer for a campaign in the 2008 presidential election.

d. Politics works for the benefi t of special interests rather than the public good.

e. Most politicians are willing to tackle the real problems facing America.

f. I generally think that politicians try to do the right thing.

g. People like me have no say about what government does.

h. Sometimes politics seems so complex that I don’t understand what’s going on.

i. Elections make government responsive to the views of the people.

27. Do you ever go online to access the Internet or to get e-mail?

a. No (Skip to the next question.)b. Yes c. (If yes) In the past year, did you do any of the

following? Check all that apply.i. Go anywhere online to get political

information?ii. Visit the Web site of your political party

or candidate?iii. Visit the Web site of another party or

candidate?iv. Visit a political discussion group or chat

room online?v. Visit a news Web site, such as CNN.

com, vi. MSNBC.com or NYTimes.com?vii. Visit a Web log (or blog) that discusses

politics or current events?

28. During the election, how often did you receive political e-mail?


www.IPDI.org

a. I did not receive any political e-mail (Skip to the next question.)

b. Several times a month c. Several times a weekd. Almost every day e. (If you received e-mail) How often did you

forward political e-mail to someone else?i. Neverii. Once in awhileiii. Sometimesiv. Often

29. If you worked or volunteered for a candidate in 2004 (such as at fundraisers or rallies), was this the fi rst time you ever did so?

a. Nob. Yesc. I did not work or volunteer for a candidate.

30. Including the 2004 campaign, how often have you worked or volunteered for candidates (such as at fundraisers or rallies)? (Never, one election, some elections, most elections)

a. Presidential candidatesb. Congressional or local candidates

31. In the 2004 campaign did you do the following? Check all that apply.

a. Watch some of the presidential debates?b. Try to personally convince someone to

support your candidate? c. Attend a Meetup.com political event?d. Attend any sort of house party for a

candidate?e. Put a political bumper sticker on your car or a

political sign in your yard?

32. Thinking about an average weekday, how much time do you spend … (None, Less than 15 minutes, 15-29 minutes, 30-59 minutes, One hour or more)

a. Reading a daily newspaperb. Watching the news on TVc. Listening to news on the radiod. Reading news on the Internete. Reading magazines

33. How have you been getting most of your national and international news?

a. Newspapersb. Televisionc. Radiod. Internet e. Magazinesf. None of the above

34. Age

35. Gender

36. Race/ethnicitya. Whiteb. Blackc. Hispanicd. Asiane. Native American f. Other

37. State of residence

38. How often do you attend religious services?a. More than once a weekb. Once a weekc. Several times a monthd. Seldom or never

39. Overall, how important is your religious faith in your life?

a. Very importantb. Importantc. Somewhat importantd. Not very importante. Not at all important

40. What is the highest level of education you have attained?

a. Less than high schoolb. High school diplomac. Some colleged. College degreee. Some graduate schoolf. Graduate degree

41. What is your marital status?a. Marriedb. Separatedc. Never marriedd. Widow/Widowere. Divorced

42. Occupation

43. Annual household incomea. Less than $25,000b. $25,000 - $49,999c. $50,000 - $74,999d. $75,000 - $99,999 e. $100,000 - $149,999f. $150,000 - $199,999g. $200,000 - $249,999h. $250,000 - $499,999i. More than $500,000

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | SOURCES | PAGE 51

www.IPDI.org

SOURCES

Arent, Lindsey. Bush Peels Back the Curtain [Online magazine]. Wired News, 10 September, 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]. Available from www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,21695,00.html.

Brown, Clifford W., Jr., Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. Serious Money: Fundraising and Contributing in Presidential Nomination Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Campaign Finance Institute Task Force on Financing Presidential Nominations. “Participation, Competition, Engagement: Reviving and Improving Public Funding for Presidential Nomination Politics.” Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Institute, 2003.

———. “So the Voters May Choose: Reviving the Presidential Matching Fund System.” Washington, D.C.: Campaign Finance Institute, 2005.

Center for the Digital Future. “Digital Future Project.” USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.

Cooper, Alexandra, and Michael Munger. “Big Money, Small Money: Characteristics of Donors in the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2000.” Paper presented at the Annual meeting of the Public Choice Society, Baltimore, Md., March 2004.

Cooper, Alexandra, 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.

Cooperman, Alan. “Pastors Issue Directive in Response to Reelection Tactic.” The Washington Post, 18 August 2004, 4.

Corrado, Anthony. “Party Finance in the Wake of BCRA: An Overview.” In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 19-37. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2006 (forthcoming).

Corrado, Anthony J. Jr. Comments made at The Campaign Finance Institute Forum, “The Election After Reform: Money & Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.” 14 January 2005.

Darr, Carol, and Julie Barko. “Under the Radar and over the Top: Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election.” Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004.

Davis, Steve, Larry Elin, and Grant Reeher. Click on Democracy: The Internet’s Power to Change Political Apathy into Civic Action. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2002.

Dwyer, Paula, Robert D. Hof, Jim Kerstetter, and Marcia Vickers. “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.

Farhi, Paul. “Small Donors Become Big Political Force: Both Major

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

Federal Election Commission. 2004 Presidential Campaign Financial Activity Summarized [Online report]. 3 February, 2005 [cited 7 November 2005]. Available from www.fec.gov/press/press2004.

———. Congressional Candidates Spend $1.16 Billion During 2003-2004 [Online report]. Federal Election Commission, 9 June, 2005 [cited 6 February 2006]. Available from www.fec.gov/press/press2005.

Feldmann, Linda. “In Politics, the Rise of Small Donors.” The Christian Science Monitor, 28 June 2004, 1.

Francia, Peter, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Wesley Joe, Lynda W. Powell, and Clyde Wilcox. “Donor Dissent: Congressional Contributors Rethink Giving.” Public Perspective, July/August 2000, 29-32.

Francia, Peter L., Rachel E. Goldberg, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, and Clyde Wilcox. “Individual Donors in the 1996 Federal Elections.” In Financing the 1996 Election, edited by John C. Green, 127-53. New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

George Washington University Battleground Poll. GWU Battleground 2005 (XXVIII) [Online report]. 25 October, 2005 [cited 15 December 2005]. Available from www.tarrance.com/battleground.html.

Graf, Joseph, Julie Barko, Diana Xiong, and Laetitia Deweirdt. “Working Paper: Online Political Discussion Groups in the 2004 Presidential Campaign: A Pilot Study Survey of Discussion Group Leaders.” Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, 2004.

Graf, Joseph, and Carol Darr. “Political Infl uentials Online in the 2004 Presidential Campaign.” Washington, D.C.: Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, The George Washington University, 2004.

Green, John C., and Nathan S. Bigelow. “The 2000 Presidential Nominations: The Costs of Innovation.” In Financing the 2000 Election, edited by David B. Magleby, 49-78. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001.

Hinds, Julie. “Campaign Cash: It’s on the Web: Who Gave What to Whom.” Detroit Free Press, 12 April 2004.

Huffi ngton, Arianna. Unelectable, My Ass! [Web site posting]. 7 January, 2004 [cited December 11 2005]. Available from www.alternet.org/story/17512.

Institute on Money in State Politics. “State Elections Overview 2004.” Helena, MT: Institute on Money in State Politics, 2005.

Kamenetz, Anya. ‘Deanie Babies’ Grow Up [Online magazine]. The Nation, 16 March, 2004 [cited 30 September 2005]. Available from www.thenation.com/doc/20040329.kamenetz.

Keller, Ed, and Jon Berry. The Infl uentials. New York: The Free Press, 2003.

Kirkpatrick, David D. “Bush Appeal to Churches Seeking Help Raises Doubts.” The New York Times, 2 July 2004, 15.

| SOURCES | INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS, DEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

www.IPDI.org

Knight Ridder News Service. “Campaign Donation Site Points to Giver.” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 27 April 2004, 4E.

Knox, David. Blue-Collar Donors? Not in This Election Cycle: Uncovering 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 nance.org/tracker/summer00/knox.html.

Malbin, Michael J. “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.” In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 219-46. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld, (forthcoming).

———. “A Public Funding System in Jeopardy: Lessons from the Presidential Nomination Contest of 2004.” Election Law Journal 5, no. 1 (2006): 2-22.

Malchow, Hal. Personal interview, 10 February 2006.

Mintz, John. “McCain Camp Enjoys a Big Net Advantage.” The Washington Post, 9 February 2000, A1.

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 September 2005]. Available from www.umich.edu/~nes/nesguide/nesguide.htm.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The Dean Activists: Their Profi le and Prospects [Online report]. 6 April, 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]. Available from people-press.org/reports.

———. Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience, Familiar Names [Online report]. 3 December, 2000 [cited 12 January 2006]. Available from people-press.org/reports.

———. Religion a Strength and Weakness for Both Parties [Online report]. 30 August, 2005 [cited 16 December 2005]. Available from people-press.org/reports.

———. Religion and the Presidential Vote [Online report]. 6 December, 2004 [cited 14 November 2005]. Available from people-press.org/commentary.

———. Voters Liked Campaign 2004, but Too Much ‘Mud-Slinging’ [Online report]. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 11 November 2004, 2004 [cited 20 October 2005]. Available from people-press.org/reports/.

Pope, Charles. “Campaign 2004: Small Donors Beef up Political Coffers.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 22 October 2004, A1.

Public Citizen. “The Importance of Bundlers to the Bush & Kerry Campaigns: Post-Election Summary of Findings.” Washington, D.C.: Public Citizen, 2004.

Rainie, Lee, Michael Cornfi eld, and John Horrigan. “The Internet and Campaign 2004.” Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet & American Life Project, The Pew Research Center For The People & the Press, 2005.

Reeher, Grant, Larry Elin, and Steve Davis. The Political Life of the Internet. New York: New York University Press, forthcoming.

Reuters. Bush’s Campaign Donor List Gets Mixed Response [Online magazine]. CNET News.com, 10 September, 1999 [cited 2 November 2005]. Available from news.com.com/2100-1023-204335.html.

Singer, Mark. “Running on Instinct.” The New Yorker, 12 January 2004.

Trippi, Joe. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything. New York: Regan Books, 2005.

U.S. Census Bureau. Table 1. Reported Rates of Voting and Registration for the Population 18 Years and over, by Selected Characteristics: November 2004. U.S. Census Bureau, 26 May, 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]. Available from www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/CB05-73Table1.xls.

———. Table 2. Educational Attainment of the Population 15 Years and over, by Single Years of Age, Sex, Race, and Hispanic Origin: 2004. U.S. Census Bureau, 28 March, 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]. Available from www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2004/tab02-01.xls.

———. Table Hinc-06. Income Distribution to $250,000 or More for Households: 2004 U.S. Census Bureau, 24 June, 2005 [cited 16 September 2005]. Available from pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032005/hhinc/new06_000.htm.

VandeHei, Jim. “Kerry Keeps His Faith in Reserve; Candidate Usually Talks About Religion before Black Audiences Only.” The Washington Post, 16 July 2004, 1.

Walker, Leslie. “Political Money, Tracked to Your Door.” The Washington Post, 28 March 2004, F07.

Weissman, Steve, and Ruth Hassan. “BCRA and the 527 Groups.” In The Election after Reform: Money, Politics and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 79-111. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld (forthcoming).

Wilcox, Clyde, Jr. Clifford W. Brown, and Lynda W. Powell. “Sex and the Political Contributor: The Gender Gap among Contributors to Presidential Candidates in 1988.” Political Research Quarterly 46, no. 2 (1993): 355-69.

Wilcox, Clyde, Alexandra Cooper, Peter Francia, John C. Green, Paul S. Herrnson, Lynda Powell, Jason Reifl er, Mark J. Rozell, and Benjamin A. Webster. “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, edited by Michael J. Malbin, 61-79. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefi eld, 2003.

Williams, Christine B., and Bruce D. Weinberg. “When Online and Offl ine Politics ‘Meetup:’ an Examination of the Phenomenon, Presidential Campaign and Its Citizen Activists.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Ill., September 2-5 2004.

Wolf, Gary. “How the Internet Invented Howard Dean.” Wired, January 2004.

SMALL DONORS AND ONLINE GIVING | SOURCES | PAGE 53

www.IPDI.org

INSTITUTE FOR POLITICSDEMOCRACY & THE INTERNET

WWW.IPDI.ORG

T H E G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N U N I V E R S I T YT H E G R A D UAT E S C H O O L O F

POLITICAL MANAGEMENT

The Institute for Politics Democracy & the InternetThe Graduate School of Political Management

The George Washington University805 21st St., NW, Suite 401

Washington, DC 200521.800.367.4776 toll free

[email protected]

small donors and online giving - campaign finance institute · small donors and online giving |...

Documents