Financial backing plays an obvious role in politics, and I’ve written previously about how companies that support a governing party tend to get more government contracts than those who don’t.  Those are typically large donors, contributing millions of dollars, but they aren’t all the financial backers parties receive.  A new study from Caltech highlights how important are donors who make somewhat smaller contributions.

The research looked at the 2016 presidential campaign of Democrat candidate Bernie Sanders.  Sanders broke with tradition and used an online fundraising service, called ActBlue.  This meant that the majority of his contributions were small, but also that they were reported to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which isn’t usually the case for single donations of less than $200.

“That may seem like a small amount, but we have always wondered what it adds up to,” the researchers say. “Until recently, we haven’t had the data to ask this question.”

Small contributions

The researchers analyzed around 100 million donation records, and found that 33% of all donations to the Sanders campaign were below $200.  What’s more, there were around seven times as many hidden donors as there were visible ones.

“What this is saying is that grassroots efforts to raise money from tens of thousands of people are an important part of a politician’s campaign,” the researchers explain.

The analysis also revealed that such hidden donors tended to contribute to the campaign later on than other donors.  They also tended to be younger, female and from a racial or ethnic minority.

The researchers believe their findings is sufficiently interesting to warrant a follow up study on the 2020 elections, especially with the increase in online fundraising platforms, which will allow them to track these small contributions for many candidates, not just Sanders.

“Money is very important in politics, but all the previous studies about campaign finance were restricted to relatively large donors, leading to a skewed picture of this important political activity,” the researchers conclude. “Given changes in technology, these smaller donors are becoming both more numerous and important.”