The fundraising totals from the various 5th District candidates’ in the second quarter didn’t come as much of a surprise. Anyone could have predicted that Niki Tsongas would clean house. But how much of that money translates to support from 5th District voters?
In a rough calculation, I compared the number of total donors with the number of donors within the 5th District. Below are the candidates’ tallies (total donors/5th C.D. donors/% in the 5th):
Donoghue: 448/328/73.21%
Eldridge: 244/134/54.91%
Finegold: 510/181/35.49%
Tsongas: 2102/542/25.78%
Nearly 75% of Tsongas’ donors cannot cast their votes for her in September. Does she still have the most donors in the 5th? Yes. But the gap closes significantly between the first column to the second. And when you break down the dollars raised in the 5th, it closes even more. Here are the totals for dollars raised (total raised/5th C.D. dollars/% in the 5th):
Donoghue: $158,935/$90,910/57.20%
Eldridge: $107,684/$55,670/51.69%
Finegold: $379,320/$127,620/33.64%
Tsongas: $669,877/$147,305/21.99%
In this case, we see Tsongas’ fundraising lead drop to under $20,000. Again, she still leads the pack in COH, but there’s more to these numbers than just the totals.
is there a way to break it down further, such as identifying any money trails to specific interest groups / industries represented by the donations to particular candidates?
See my comment below. I was evidently composing that when you hit “send” so I didn’t know I was repeating your question, but I obviously think it’s an important one.
Can you please reveal your source for these numbers? I’m not challenging their accuracy, just curious…
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Any reason you didn’t include Miceli in your analysis? I agree that he’s probably not going to be much of a factor in this race, but I’m just wondering if he raised any money at all, and if not, why he’s still in the game?
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Your breakdown of in and out of distict is very interesting. Still, the color of the money is all the same, and Tsongas took in about 50% of it. She had the lowest average contribution ($319), if I just divide your two totals. Donaghue was next, at $355, followed by Eldridge at $441, and then a big jump to Finegold, at $744.
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Finegold’s high average donation (more than twice the average {$335} of the other three combined) is consistent with his support for business-based “solutions” to the healthcare crisis. Did you look to see if there was a pattern in the employment of his large donors?
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It’s interesting to see that David Eisenthal’s prediction market is roughly in line with these numbers.
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One further observation, for what it’s worth: the recent Sun poll (adjusted to 100% to eliminate undecideds) shows that the percentage of voters expressing a preference for the various candidates as a ratio to percentage of donors in the second quarter ranks the candidates as follows: Eldridge (1.96), Donaghue (1.79), Finegold (1.21), and Tsongas (0.58). If that’s any measure of how much each candidate has to spend to get a vote, it certainly levels the playing field a lot. I’m not suggesting this as a new metric, just observing that (as we all know) monetary support does not necessarily translate into support at the ballot box.
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Like David Bernstein in his “Million Dollar Widow” piece I conclude that the race is still “wide open.”
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…While I’m the first person to want the D5 race to be “wide open”, I’m not sure that particular article is really evidence of that.
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I do agree with the article’s conclusion that the Tsongas campaign is looking more and more like the Tom Reilly campaign. Run to the middle and say nothing of substance. And while there are a few people connected to the Deval Patrick campaign working and consulting there, it is anything but a grassroots campaign (anyone received a robocall yet to get an ice cream cone with Niki yet?).
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Still, there are some warning flags that go up regarding that article.
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1. The conclusions of the article are largely based on the leaked poll from a campaign who may have recently changed pollsters, and who’s methodology has yet to be clarified.
2. Bernstein uses as evidence of the flagging poll numbers the replacement of their field director, who I understand actually left to take a new job at a nonprofit.
3. Bernstein fails to get any quote or comment from the Tsongas campaign — something a halfway decent journalist would have done in a story like this.
4. Bernstein in fact provides not a single quote, sourced or unsourced, in the entire article. Much as I appreciate aggressive journalism and the need to use anonymous sources, it can’t be that hard to get even an anonymous usable quote.
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I’ll be thrilled when the press finally wakes up and writes a story about the D5 race that isn’t just another coronation piece for the Tsongas campaign. But this article isn’t going to make that happen.
This race has always been Tsongas’ race to lose. While she has a large amount of funds outside of the 5th Congressional District, and a close margin of district support from donors 542 to Donahue’s 328, Tsongas big bucks can provide her with resources the other candidates cannot afford.
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Number can be manipulated many different ways, however Tsongas’ Dominance in the race cannot be denied.
I thought that those weren’t in the reports. If so, then there’s potential for huge error in your report. For example, I made a small donation to Eldridge, and don’t live in the 5th. If many people did what I did, then Eldridge would have gotten more total donors, the same number in the 5th, and a lower % in the fifth — same effect for $$.
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Now, it could have happened equally in both donors and dollars for all candidates, relative to their $200+ donations. But I doubt it. If I had to guess, I’d bet that Eldridge has risen the largest number of sub-$200 donations from outside the district, relative to his other donations. Pure speculation to be sure, but I ask again:
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what about sub-$200 donations? Are they in your analysis? If so, how? If not, how does this skew your results?