The run up to the Wisconsin recall election pushed our May numbers skyward to over a quarter billion dollars (!!) by the end of the month. Sure, we would’ve preferred a rather different outcome, but there’s a lesson in Wisconsin that’s more than gloom and doom: small donors have the power to create a national political event.
From the protests through both rounds of elections, this has been a story driven by small donors, including those who sent millions to Wisconsin Democrats using ActBlue. The top five entities for May all come in with average donations under $40. That kind of engagement forced the GOP to commit astronomical sums of money to a race that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
In short: grassroots donations sustained a state-level political struggle that lasted more than a year, and elevated it to national prominence. That’s a win, even if the returns didn’t go our way.
|Number of contributions||208,071|
|Average Contribution size||$43.49|
|Committees receiving money||1,794|
Here’s what May 2012 looks like compared to May 2011 and 2008 (last presidential election year). Percentage change is year over year:
|May 2008||May 2011||May 2012||Change|
Here are the five top committees, by number of donors, for May 2012.
|Democratic Party of WI||Party Committee||24,158||$657,544|
|DFA Recall Campaign||Organization||12,887||$309,818|