So who is getting the big money contributions?

kerry666 == just an opinion but that is why I suggested readers could register on their own if they don't want to accept the obvious and default.

Edwards as replacement? No, he is not evil, just not bright. Will probably change the password to "BabyHuey" if he gets the nomination.

Did you note who the "big money donor" leader is and who accepted PAC money counter to his claims?

I noticed that when you convert the percentages to actual dollars, Bush received around $473,000 in PAC money in Q4 of 2003 and Kerry received around $23,000.

In terms of "big money donors," again when you convert the percentages to actual dollars, Bush received around $24,751,000 from such donors and Kerry received around $1,242,000.

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Fear not, Dan, he's working on a way to spin it right now. You weren't here in 2000 when he refuted the notion that Al Gore had won the popular vote by pointing out that the states Bush won covered a larger geographic area than the states Gore won, making him the candidate with the most acreage.

all conversion proves is that there is a broader base of support for Bush.

What is plain is that MORE of Kerry's money has come in the form of LARGE donations and that the percentage of his donors who donate >$1000 outstrips Bush (by a good sized margin). Large contributors tend to have the stigma of "special interest" with Democrits or at least that is how they always play it out with large contributors to the Republican campaigns.

Bush has never claimed that he has not received PAC monies but Kerry has made the claim.

And a recent anti-Kerry ad put out by a pro-Bush group tries to suggest that a vote for Kerry is a vote for special interests, the implication being that a vote for Bush wouldn't be, and that's untrue.

If you look at the contributions of $2,000 or more, it's Bush 53% and Kerry 54%.

look at ALL the numbers they look like:

Bush 76% are over 250, 68% are over 1000
24% less than 200
1 % 200-249
8 % 250-999
15% 1000-1900
53% 200 and up

Kerry 96% are over 250, 76% are over 1000
5 % less than 200
1 % 200-249
20% 250-999
22% 1000-1900
54% 200 and up

Any way you look at it Kerry leads in the percentage of supporters giving large contributions.

Considering that many of the big dollar contributors expect favors (at least that is what Democrats have always charged) then Kerry is well supported by "special Interests".

PS - now if the Washington Post or FEC had just managed to make each set of numbers add up to 100 it would be more useful.

to draw a conclusion:
24% gave less than 200
24 million
means ~6million contributed by people giving less than 200 or at least 300,000 contributors.

'For that reason, this chart is not sufficient to support your statement or the statement that Bush's larger number of actual dollars means he has more widespread support. It may -- but there isn't enough information here to state it as a certainty'

Bo

The percentages are percentages of the dollars given, not percentages of contributors who gave those dollars. 24% of Bush's contributions came in amounts of $200 or less. At least that's how I read it. So without knowing how many contributors there were at each level, it's impossible to determine what an average contribution was.

Ed joked that the percentages don't add up to 100 (Bush's add up to 101%) but I'd guess that's due to rounding.

If 24% of the dollar total was from contributions less than 200, then $5,952,000 came in <200 contributions.

Assuming an average $150 contribution, gives 39,680 contributors. I dropped a decimal point figuring it in my head the first time.

Bo

The sum (24% of 24.8m) was contributed in denominations <$200.

If this sum represents the total of all <200 contributions, then the average contribution making up this sum must be less than $200. $150 assumes that the majority of them were towards the upper end on the range (1-199)

Bo

In order to calculate an average, you need two pieces of information, and this chart only provides one of them.

it could NOT be that way because the chart clearly shows that the percentages are INDIVIDUALS, not dollar amounts. That is why the lower half is labeled Individuals breakdown (Q4).

54% of the INDIVIDUAL contributions for Kerry were over $2000 while only 53% of the INDIVIDUAL contributions for Bush were over $2000.

76% of Kerry's INDIVIDUAL contributors gave over $1000 each while only 68% of the INDIVIDUAL contributions for Bush were over the $1000 per contributor figure.

While Bush may (or may not) have received the biggest individual check this has nothing to do with the NUMBERS of "big money" contributors.

Any way you reason it out the numbers plainly say that Kerry is receiving MOST of his contributions from the well to do rather than from the less affluent.

Kucinich on the other hand has received almost all his individual contributions from the "small spenders" with only 10% of his contributors writing a check for over $1000.

....it still doesn't tell you how many individual contributors there were at any of the contribution levels.