Source of political donations

http://www.thenation.com/blog/165985/super-pac-big-donors-propel-romney-florida-victory

Ari Berman on February 1, 2012 - 12:36pm ET

Want to know how Mitt Romney won Florida and why he’ll almost certainly be the GOP nominee? There’s an easy answer: a Super PAC and deep-pocketed donors.

According to the latest disclosure reports, the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, raised $30 million in 2011, 98 percent from donors who gave $25,000 or more. The PAC got $10 million from ten donors who gave a million bucks each, including from Houston Republican Bob Perry, the major funder behind the vile Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004.

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Barack Obama’s fundraising, in contrast, paints a more nuanced version of the candidate, telling the story of two campaigns—one financed by a select group of incredibly rich bundlers, the other bankrolled by the small donors who helped propel Obama to the White House in 2008.

On the big donor front, 445 bundlers raised at least $74.4 million for Obama and the DNC in 2011. Sixty-one bundlers raised $500,000 or more. Last night Obama held his twelfth and thirteenth fundraisers of the month, where the price of admission was $35,800 a head.

On the flip side, of the $39.9 million the Obama campaign raised in the fourth quarter of 2011, 43 percent came from donors spending $200 or less, giving Obama a major small-donor advantage over Romney. (Obama raised $68 million for his campaign and the DNC, but the DNC figures, which are more dependent on large donations, are not yet available.) In total, of the $125 million Obama raised in 2011, 47 percent came from donors giving $200 or less, and 54 percent from donors giving $200 or more.

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