I was looking over stats at Open Secrets trying to see if I could find out patterns of donations within an industry. Turns out that isn’t easy to do, but I did get distracted by looking into the state by state fundraising numbers. It turns out that Obama is the top fundraiser only in Illinois, Hawaii, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, North Dakota, Vermont, Washington and Colorado.
There are several states in which Obama is the top Democrat. States like Idaho, Utah, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Wyoming. In fact in Mississippi Obama out raises everyone except Thompson and McCain. In Wisconsin only Thompson beats Obama.
We all know that Clinton and Obama have both raised more than any Republican, and Obama is close behind Clinton in fundraising. I would have expected Obama to be winning more states. The states he is winning fall into four categories; two home states, two very small blue states, five red states, and Washington.
In Illinois Obama gets a huge advantage, his home state loves him. He gets more than three times as much as Hilary with over $9 mil to less than $3 mill from Clinton and less than $1 mil for Romeny. Hawaii also favors its favorite son. The proportion is even better with over 8 times the next contender, but the scale is much smaller since Obama only raises $311,191 there.
After Illinois, Washington gives Obama the biggest lead in fundraising with $1 mil almost twice as much as Romney, the next contender.
Georgia is a very red state, but Obama out raises Romney there by almost 200,000 and Guillianni by about double that. In Georgia, the only metro area that Obama raises the most money is Albany with a grand total of only $4,600. He comes in second to Romney in all but one of the top five zip codes, 30309 Atlanta, GA. That appears to be a Democratic zip because Obama raised $70,425. Almost double the next candidate, Hilary Clinton.
Kentucky surprised me by giving more of its money to Obama, Hilary, and Edwards than any republican. Obama does not win any of the top metro areas except Louisville where he raises three times as much as Hilary. He wins a few zip codes in Louisville and one in Prospect.
In North Dakota, Obama comes in second to Romney without winning either metro area or any zip codes. Likewise in Utah, Obama comes in poorly in most metro areas and zip codes. For Wyoming, Obama comes in fourth in Casper, $10,000 behind Hilary in Cheyenne, does no better than third in any given zip code but still beaks Hilary by over $11,000.
The fundraising map over at the NY Times, shows this effect if you are looking for it. Click between the link for Clinton and Obama and watch most the bigger circles shrink and the smaller ones grow when when you change to Obama.
We already knew that Obama was raising more from small donors than his opponents from either party. What this tells us is that Obama’s donor base is more geographically disbursed than the other big fundraisers. He has surprisingly high levels of support in states that were red or purple in 2000 and 2004. It explains why Obama is ready to open offices in out of the way states that have rarely seen Democratic presidential campaigns for the last 30 years.
If you like what you see in Barack Obama and want to help broaden his donor base even further, please make a donation. Even better go to his political networking site and join your local groups as well as the Kossacks and Netroots for Obama. Get involved with the strongest grassroots campaign for any of the presidential candidates for 2008. Now in the time to get involved.
