Cross-posted from
MyDD, where there are graphs as well.
2006 Longitudinal Study
In a post some months ago, I discussed the Democratic National Committee's finances and how they seemed to have changed under Howard Dean. At that time, I compared two snapshots in time-- the months of December 2003, and December 2005 (as it turns out, the numbers I used were actually for the respective Novembers).
Well, as I promised lo those many months ago, I have now gone back and looked at the Democratic National Committee's finances over the course of the entire year to date (and included the end of last year too). These come straight from the figures reported on the FEC's website. Have a look at what I found.
Basic Financials
[chart omitted, see MyDD.]
In September of this year, the DNC received $5,655,303, of which $5,575,863 came from individuals, and $17,100 came from PACs and the ilk. Over the course of the year, receipts have been largely in the $5 million to $6 million range monthly, with the vast majority, also in the $5 million to $6 million range, coming from individual donations.
Operating expenses have fluctuated between $3 million to $5 million+ monthly.
Donations to state parties have fluctuated the most wildly of all, varying from $83,000 to $2 1/2 million in any given month. Here, it really matters which month you look at, and to get a more accurate picture of what the DNC is sending to the states (and which states), one needs to look at several months in a row.
It appears that Dean runs the outfit on a pay-as-you-go basis; as the 'Receipts' and 'Spent' curves track each other pretty faithfully. A couple of interesting points I noticed:
1) There was a big dip in receipts in the month of December. I guess people are more interested in spending on Christmas presents than on the poor Democrats!
2) There is a big spending push, more than receipts, this September which is also drawing down the cash-on-hand. This would be the homestretch-push just before this November's election. I expect October will reflect as big or bigger a spending push.
I'm guessing December will be the Christmas-shopping lull where everyone catches their breath, and then in January Dean will set about building the DNC's reserves (Cash-On-Hand) again.
The Individual Donors
All campaigns and political organizations must itemize, that is list out by name and address and report to the FEC, all donors who have given more than $200 to them in the calendar year. You could have written a check for $200, in which case they have to itemize you. Also, you could have sent a check for $50 a month each month, and after the April (4th) check rolls in, your total for the year has hit $200 and they have to itemize you. If you are a Democracy Bond-holder who sends in $20 a month, you won't hit $200 for the year until after your October donation, at which point you will show up as an itemized donor in the DNC's report to the FEC. Up until that point your donations will have fallen in the "unitemized" pool.
[chart omitted, see MyDD.]
I had theorized that the Democracy-Bond holders would show up in the following manner: Assuming that most of them/(us) give less than $200 a month, we would fall in the "unitemized" bucket until our donations for the year totaled $200 or more, and then we would become "itemized". As the year wears on, both the number of "itemized" donors, and the ratio of "itemized" to "unitemized" donations, should both increase. I also expected the amount of "itemized" donor money to increase over the course of the year.
In addition, I predicted that the number of "itemized" donors would drop drastically between December 2005 and January 2006, as the "itemized" status of the small Democracy-Bond holders "reset" at the beginning of the new year. Then over the course of the new year, the number of "itemized" donors would increase as the Democracy-Bond holders' donation totals passed the $200 mark over time.
Well, it appears I was half-right. While the ratio of itemized to unitemized donor money stayed pretty much the same all year, there is indeed a definite "saw-tooth" in the graph of numbers of itemized donors between December 2005 and January 2006. Based on this I estimate that in January 2006, there were a hard core of about 6,945 Democracy-Bond holders who give less than $200 per month, with an unknown but much smaller number who give that amount or more per month. How many are there now? I will have to wait for the January 2007 saw-tooth to be able to make an estimate of that.
But there appears to be a lot of "noise" in the data as well. There's the big December dip, and over the rest of the year the dollar amounts of itemized and unitemized money seem to stay fairly constant. This implies to me that there are still a lot of one-time donations coming in, making up if anything the bulk of the DNC's receipts.
Largesse To The States
I split this out in two ways: by state, and then by month.
[charts omitted, see MyDD.]
Every state got something over the course of the year, but clearly some states got more, and got multiple checks. The big outlier is New Jersey, which got a single check for over $1 million in the month of October 2005. I'm undoubtedly forgetting-- was there a hot special election in that state that month?
That's about all I have for now.
If you like, you can look at my raw data in my spreadsheet.