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EXPECTATIONS GAME. Perhaps in response to the buzz around Barack Obama's announcement that his campaign is close to the ground-breaking 250,000-donor mark for the second fundraising quarter, which ends this Saturday, Hillary Clinton's communications director Howard Wolfson has sent an e-mail to "friends" explicitly reminding folks that HRC is on track to meet her last-quarter numbers:
We expect to bring in about what we did in the First Quarter, or slightly more, which should put us in the range of $27 million. To put that figure in some perspective, it is more than any Democrat has ever raised in the second quarter of the “off” year. While that figure is record setting, we do expect Senator Obama to significantly outraise us this quarter.
I should say so. Let's do some back-of-the-envelope math here, shall we? Last quarter, Obama brought in $25.7 million from 104,000 donors. This time around, he is shooting for 250,000 donors (his campaign currently reports 245,272). Even assuming that all Obama's second-quarter growth was from low-dollar donors (an assumption that's almost certainly incorrect), I don't see how this adds up to less than $37 million. The average online political donation tends to be around $80 per person. Multiply that by 150,000 and you get $12 million, which can be added to a presumed mix of high and low-dollar donations from the other 100,000 equalling $25 million, as was the case for Obama last quarter. Even if the number of high-dollar donors among the first 100,000 was lower this time, reducing his per-donor average among the first 100,000 from close to $250 to, say, $200, his minimum total for the 250,000 would be $32 million. And a per-donor average of just $160 for all 250,000 donors would still add up to $37.5 million. His per-donor average would have to fall to $140 or below for him to raise less than $35 million; last quarter his per donor average was nearly $250.
CORRECTION: The number of donors is for the year to date, not for the second quarter, rendering the above irrelevant. The campaign was predicting 150,000 donors this quarter, not 250,000.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
COMMENTS (7)
Garance: doesn't that math assume that his existing 100K donors will chip in just as much as they did last quarter? I'm not saying that's a crazy assumption, but it's the sort of assertion that needs to be backed up.
Unrelated note, I can't tell you how refreshing it is to see people measuring # of donors as well as # of dollars.
Posted by: Dan Miller | June 28, 2007 1:10 PM
Never mind, I can't do math.
Posted by: Dan Miller | June 28, 2007 1:11 PM
Obama has been charging for a lot of his rallies. So a lot of his donors are giving like $20. I'll take the under.
Cheers,
Nicholas
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | June 28, 2007 1:16 PM
Perhaps we should all wait until the actual numbers come out, but if we're saying that Obama's candidacy is bringing out the vote like never before, I find it hard to believe that this new group of donors will be anywhere as affluent as the first 100,000 (plus many of them may have maxed out already). One donor is one potential vote, so if I'm going to get excited about something, it's going to be about the 250,000, not necessarily the money.
Posted by: Mike | June 28, 2007 1:37 PM
Wow -- since you posted this, his number of donors has climbed nearly 2k -- in roughly two hours.
With two days before the quarter ends, this could be some insanity. Assuming the average new donor is giving $50 -- that's still another $100k.
I wouldn't be surprised to see them hit 250k by the end of the day.
This reminds me a lot of June 30, 2003.
Posted by: Matt Singer | June 28, 2007 1:57 PM
Obama is better off beating HRC significantly in donor numbers and just barely losing in total funds. It allows him to keep the mantle of underdog, be seen as the movement candidate all for the cost of having an imperceptibly smaller giant pile of money to spend on the elections.
Not that the Obama is trying to to raise less money than Clinton but campaign fights are like judo battles - you use your opponent's strength against them. Having Clinton seen as a juggernaut helps Obama as I find the 'inevitability' argument of Clinton to be a loser.
I think Clinton has a better than 50/50 chance of winning the nomination on the merits but if she allows her campaign to get a bit arrogant or looks too far ahead to the general election I think she will stumble and get beat. Overconfidence is as much a threat to the Clinton campaign as Obama or Edwards.
Posted by: joejoejoe | June 29, 2007 5:50 AM
Obama is a fake. If he was for any kind of genuine change he would either 1.have been given no press coverage whatsoever or 2.been assassinated already.
Posted by: Realist | June 30, 2007 6:45 PM