On "Marketplace," an NPR program t
http://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/donordemographics.asp?cycle=2002hat is carried by KQED San Francisco, I heard a listener's comments on a prior piece. I didn't hear the original piece, but the gist of it was that Republicans should stop whining about 527's and embrace them if they want to be a party of the people, by the people.
The listener's reply was that, according to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, the stats for 2002 show that the Republicans were in fact the party of the people, since they pulled in more small donations, and Democrats dominated the big donations categories. All told, the Republicans took in more individual donations, thus QED, 527's circumvent the normal democratic process and don't reflect "Party of the People"-ness.
I went to their website, and tried to find the relevant documentation, and I presume that the listener had seen this URL. Clearly, according to this website, the Republicans pulled in more donations 303k to the Democrats 211k. Yet, according to this website, this resulted in $384M for Republicans, and $351M for Democrats, a difference of a mere $33M.
Arguably, that's a lot of money. But what I want to know is, what gives? Why do Republicans, who putatively pull in more corporate donations, also pull in more individual donations as well? By almost 100k (which seems to equate to $33M)?
Secondly, if you go to this URL you can see the break-down on top indivual doners for 2002. The Dems clearly come out on top, as the listener correctly noted.
I'm still not convinced that the Republicans are the party of the people. I don't know if donation stats are the only way to judge this metric. That said, perhaps there is something populist about the Republicans, and that should worry Democrats.
That all said, the listener failed to mention this URL, the total fundraising showing that overall the Republicans pulled in $442M to the Democrats $217M. That's certainly double the amount of money for a party that I cited above only leads by a factor of 1.5 in the small donation arena.
What do you all think about this?