Some Peeks Behind the Presidential Fundraising Totals

The Washington Post has a fair, if not particularly complete look at the fundraising and financial totals of most of the presidential candidtes. Some of the information is not bad, others fairly useless.

One total that is mentioned is the collection of general election contributions from individuals and PACs. Hilary Clinton has raised the most in general election funds, nearly $7 million. Her nearest competition on that score, on either side of the aisle, is Rudy Guiliani, who pulled in $1.13 million. Barack Obama pulled in just $1 million in general election funds. That means 27% percent of the total funds raised by Hilary Clinton in the first quarter are unavailable for her to use during the primary. Furthermore, fully 2759 individuals cannot contribute any more money to her campaign. While that is a drop in the bucket, closing off contributors at this stage of the came doesn't really help your fundraising operation. From here on in, it becomes more and more difficult to raise funds, particularly in such a crowded field.

On the other hand, Barack Obama raised just $1 million in general election contributions, or just 4 percent. Just 72 contributors to Obama's campaign have given the maximum contribution of $4,600 for individuals. That means Obama can go back to donors again and again if necessary. Nearly 3 out of 4 contributors detailed on his finance report have a total contributions of less than $2,300 and fully 50% of contributors have contributed less than $1,000, meaning Obama can still raise primary money from those individuals. In short, Obama's fundraising machine is much broader based than Clinton's and that translates to success.

Mitt Romney showed some very impressive numbers (although he is going to have to amend his report because everything is marked as Primary contributions even though 325 contributions are listed where the YTD amount is in excess of $2,300.)

I will have more as I get more time to look behind the numbers. Somethings to come, what the candidates are spending their money on and whether that is a wise expenditure of funds.