Political Funding

I thought I would look at the composition of funding for this years candidates and create some graphs to get a better understanding of some of the data. Here you can see how the donations were proportioned. For instance what percentage of the donations came from $2,000+ donations and what percentage of the donations came from donations of under $200 in value.

There are a few interesting things I found out. By far, Ron Paul receives more funding from donations valuing under $200 than any other candidate, as of the end of the third quarter, they made up about 50% of his funding.

On the other hand, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton receive the vast majority of their funding (larger than 50%) from donations valued at over $2,000. I find this particularly interesting in the case of Hillary Clinton because she claims to be the representative of the "average American and the middle class family struggling to make ends meet," but we all know that your average American or middle class family can hardly afford to give a non-deductible donation of $2,000.

My entire life I've heard this statement: " Follow the money trail." Hillary claims that she wants to change Washington DC and America. However, the far majority of her funding comes from people who are obviously benefiting from the status quo, and I doubt these people would be donating to a candidate who would do anything to change this, if not improve their situation. This of course in my point of view is expected of Giuliani, so I won't really make a mention of it with regard to him, but Hillary claims to be this populist who wants to be elected in order to represent the typical middle/lower class hard working American. Her funding statistics would say otherwise however. And to me, the source of funding is much more important than whatever comes out of the candidates mouth.

What annoys me the most actually, is that I feel the media is trying to shove Giuliani and Clinton down our throats. They are the candidates most talked about by the media, but if you look at their funding, its the same. It's all $2,000+ donations which either come from wealthy individuals or corporate backed lobbyists who have a vested interest to maintain the status quo. I find that disgusting. If it really came down to Giuliani vs. Hillary, would there really be a real major difference between the two? By just looking at their funding, I would have to say no I think.

If I were to vote Democrat (which I'm not) though, by looking just at this I would probably vote for Obama, just because at the very least, a large part of his donations come from the people he claims he wants to represent, that cannot be said for Hillary. Of course as most of you know, I will most likely be voting for Ron Paul, and thankfully, his donations seem to be coming from the most economically average people.

Here are the graphs. All data came from www.fec.gov.