FUNDRAISING….Referring to the graphic on the right (from the Obama campaign), Atrios asks:
The question really is about why Obama can raise $5 million in a day and (presumably) Clinton can’t.
The obvious answer is something related to Obama’s ability to inspire rapturous support from his legion of fans. But I think there’s probably more to it than that. Hillary Clinton obviously has plenty of ability to raise money from big donors, but as we all know from endless regurgitation of exit poll results, her supporters tend to be older, lower income, less educated, and more likely to be working class. On a mass basis, (a) they just don’t have as much money as Obama’s supporters and (b) they don’t hang out on the internet a lot. Obama’s fans, conversely, are heavily made up of white collar, college educated folks who might not be accustomed to writing $2,300 checks but are perfectly able to comfortably write a few $200 checks here and there — and aren’t rattled at the idea of filling out a donation page on a website to do it. Hillary’s plant workers and Social Security recipients, not so much.
That said, this morning I figured that last night’s results suggested that Hillary still had a slight edge in winning the nomination. But if Obama is really out-fundraising her by 2:1 or more, that’s a big deal. It probably means Obama is the slight favorite instead.
UPDATE: The Clinton campaign emails the news that Hillary has raised $3 million in the past 24 hours. That’s less than Obama, but still pretty impressive.
So what does this say about my theory above? Beats me. Seriously, I guess we should all just shut up and wait to see what happens. I really have no idea what’s going on anymore.
