Clinton Sees Rise in Online Donations

NYT: Clinton Sees Rise in Online Donations
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: March 22, 2008

....Although Mr. Obama has continued to raise significantly more money than Mrs. Clinton, largely because of contributions gushing in over the Internet, she has managed to stay competitive through a surprising surge of her own online. Mrs. Clinton’s rebound from a dismal fund-raising performance in January, in which she raised $14 million compared with Mr. Obama’s $36 million and was forced to lend her campaign $5 million, is a significant underlying story line driving the race at this point.

Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama released their fund-raising numbers for February late Thursday to the Federal Election Commission, with Mr. Obama raising $55 million and Mrs. Clinton bringing in $35 million. While far less than what Mr. Obama raised, which included more than $45 million collected over the Internet, and despite the fact that she finished the month with $8.7 million in unpaid bills, Mrs. Clinton’s total was crucial to her popular vote victories in Texas and Ohio on March 4.

It was driven not by the affluent donor network that her campaign has been known for but by about $30 million in Internet contributions that arrived mostly in small-dollar increments. Her contributions over all averaged just more than $100 in February.

Mrs. Clinton’s advisers struggle to explain fully her online surge, which has continued into March, saying it was unexpected to them, as well. In January, the campaign brought in $7 million online, a monthly record for Mrs. Clinton but a pittance compared with the $28 million Mr. Obama raised online. Previously, Mrs. Clinton’s best quarter online came from July 1 to Sept. 30, 2007, when she raised $8 million.

The uptick in Internet contributions could not have come at a better time for Mrs. Clinton. Many of her high-dollar donors have reached their contribution limits of $4,600, diminishing the importance of the powerful money machine created by her husband and other top Democratic supporters....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/22/us/politics/22donors.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

That looks pretty good. The HRC's COH of $33,174,862.16 sounds like quite a wad!

Here's the problem with that number.

1) $8,733,609.11 in outstanding debt. This rbings the total down to $24,441,253.05. That's still a wad of money! But wait, there's more...

2) There's another number to take into account. That's her nearly. $22 million that can only be used in the General Election. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, that leaves less than $3 million for her to spend in the primaries. But wait, there's more...

3) You cannot leave out the $5 million loan she gave herself.

Bottom line, Hillary Clinton's campaign ended February more than $2,000,000 in the red.

By contrast, Obama ended February with more than $38.8 million cash on hand. About $8 million is GE only and about $625,000 in debt leaves Obama with just over $30,000,000 to spend on the primaries.

And it doesn't end there. Obama has received more than 925,000 donations to date in MArch. If we lower expectations on the average donation size from the February average of ~$75 down to $50, that's more than $2,000,000 per day. If he's maintaining a burn rate of $1.5 million per day, he's going to end March with more than $50 million on hand.

thanks to Walt Starr for c&p

As a former long time member of moveon.org I was very upset that before Super Tuesday they decided to pit one democrat against another choosing Obama over Clinton.

Normally they have waited for the chosen Presidential nomination before moveon donations are sent. Leaving it up to members to send money to the person of their choice.

It is therefore no surprise that Obama got that huge bump of small donations amounting to millions of dollars.... when the best online democratic get out the vote machines was on his side, thats what happens.

I and about 39,000 Clinton supporters or more where disenfranchised from the organisation which we had been apart of, well before Obama was even a senator.

Now do you understand his quick rise in popularity and his ability to make so much money.

It makes me cringe when I hear all the gloating about his huge donations. It was hardly surprising Clinton couldn't keep up.

Bottom line...this will end in tears. I really believe with all my heart if Obama wins the nomination we will be sending the wrong candidate up against McBush.


I am certain Moveon.org are directly responsible for dividing the grass roots of the party.

Given that Obama's campaign has consistently asked for online donations and emphasized the importance and roll of small donors.

(You know that MoveOn made its decision after more that 50% of its members got behind a candidate, right? This was a grassroots decision, not a top-down one.)

-FedoraLV

They are just giving her money to pay herself back.