Monday, February 20, 2012
To say fundraising this election is being dominated by the 1% would be a gross overestimation. The actual number is more like .0000063%. Super PACs, the most talked about aspect so far of the 2012 campaign, received nearly 80% of their individual donor funding last year from just 196 people, each of whom contributed $100,000 or more. More than half of the individual contributions to super PACS (52%) came from the 37 super wealthy Americans who contributed $500,000 or more.
Donations from individuals account for 56% of all super PAC funding. This concentration of political fundraising in the hands of so few people was made possible by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which freed up certain political action committees to collect unlimited contributions from people, businesses and unions.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
To Learn More:
Auctioning Democracy: The Rise of Super PACs and the 2012 Election (by Adam Lioz and Blair Bowie, Demos)
The .0000063% Election (by Ari Berman, TomDispatch)
Democrats Seek Super-Rich Donors to Match Republican Super-Rich Donors...Is This Democracy in Action? (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
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