UPDATED: Liberals Have Strongest Q2 in Years, But Still Mostly From Large Donors
[UPDATE: Thanks to a commenter for pointing out my error in calculating the last row of the second table. The overall averages make a lot more sense now, don't they!]
The Liberals have posted their strongest 2nd quarter fundraising totals in years, nearly matching the Conservative Party totals for the months of April, May and June. The Bloc Québécois also reported its strongest 2nd quarter figures since 2005. The Conservatives, NDP and Greens are all roughly in line with recent years' 2nd quarter performance, although the NDP had suffered a well-below average first quarter due to its decision to withdraw from fundraising in advance of provincial elections and leadership contests, and is thus down on the cumulative totals for the year.
The Liberals' second quarter includes funds raised at some large dinners, including the April 1 dinner in Toronto, the Montréal dinner several weeks later, and the May convention whose fees must be reported as political contributions. Thus, when you look at the breakdown by contribution range, Liberals raised far more money than the Conservative Party in the category of contributions over $200 ($3.08M vs. $1.25M), but significantly less in the $200 and under category ($791K vs. $2.7M, or less than a third). In fact it remains the only party to draw most of its contributions from large donors, although Liberals have seen a year-over-year improvement in 2nd quarter fundraising in the small donor category percentage-wise as well.
Indeed, with the average Liberal contribution in the over $200 category at $700, many of these donors are close to "tapped out" in terms of their contribution room for the rest of the year, meaning that fundraising in the second half of the year will have to focus on developing new donors. The extent to which they can do that will determine the extent to which they can keep up their much-vaunted new fundraising capacity.
Here are the breakdowns by donor category:
The Liberals have posted their strongest 2nd quarter fundraising totals in years, nearly matching the Conservative Party totals for the months of April, May and June. The Bloc Québécois also reported its strongest 2nd quarter figures since 2005. The Conservatives, NDP and Greens are all roughly in line with recent years' 2nd quarter performance, although the NDP had suffered a well-below average first quarter due to its decision to withdraw from fundraising in advance of provincial elections and leadership contests, and is thus down on the cumulative totals for the year.
The Liberals' second quarter includes funds raised at some large dinners, including the April 1 dinner in Toronto, the Montréal dinner several weeks later, and the May convention whose fees must be reported as political contributions. Thus, when you look at the breakdown by contribution range, Liberals raised far more money than the Conservative Party in the category of contributions over $200 ($3.08M vs. $1.25M), but significantly less in the $200 and under category ($791K vs. $2.7M, or less than a third). In fact it remains the only party to draw most of its contributions from large donors, although Liberals have seen a year-over-year improvement in 2nd quarter fundraising in the small donor category percentage-wise as well.
Indeed, with the average Liberal contribution in the over $200 category at $700, many of these donors are close to "tapped out" in terms of their contribution room for the rest of the year, meaning that fundraising in the second half of the year will have to focus on developing new donors. The extent to which they can do that will determine the extent to which they can keep up their much-vaunted new fundraising capacity.
Quarterly Fundraising as reported to Elections Canada, by Party, 2005 to today
| Lib | NDP | Grn | BQ | Cons | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-Q2 | 3878113.54 | 711269.13 | 192350.47 | 68969.94 | 3957662.18 |
| 2009-Q1 | 1831843.33 | 595611.16 | 211268.53 | 122842.03 | 4361540.04 |
| 2008-Q4 | 2286751.1 | 1745344.87 | 546185.59 | 189190.75 | 6343349.25 |
| 2008-Q3 | 1855252.99 | 1889805.02 | 660223.38 | 450519.83 | 6367676.44 |
| 2008-Q2 | 912378.43 | 711637.28 | 213922 | 36698.33 | 3525352.31 |
| 2008-Q1 | 846129.37 | 1119647.67 | 210962.82 | 37006.31 | 4954550.22 |
| 2007-Q4 | 1944946.11 | 1424524.23 | 414274.84 | 336384.8 | 4892921.63 |
| 2007-Q3 | 793834.9 | 594479.68 | 218505.14 | 31520.06 | 3152985.38 |
| 2007-Q2 | 1268043.45 | 722760.09 | 197373.82 | 27928.8 | 3768122.62 |
| 2007-Q1 | 531141.12 | 1235421.63 | 154451.5 | 34227.82 | 5176736.3 |
| 2006-Q4 | 6454630.5 | 1328466.51 | 370791.35 | 338467.42 | 5640461.79 |
| 2006-Q3 | 867329.87 | 795925.34 | 85609.52 | 15568.3 | 3697689 |
| 2006-Q2 | 1192414.27 | 734642.42 | 193808.12 | 27566.96 | 4018952 |
| 2006-Q1 | 1328515.12 | 1113563.26 | 125782.89 | 147855.66 | 5371354 |
| 2005-Q4 | 3770222.09 | 2716054.91 | 216016.34 | 438615.56 | 7042441 |
| 2005-Q3 | 1062332.13 | 720652.49 | 47418.79 | 96221.91 | 3247131 |
| 2005-Q2 | 1434284.53 | 1134527.86 | 102181.06 | 76131.35 | 4977497 |
| 2005-Q1 | 1702974.83 | 559352.48 | 44518.4 | 124537.73 | 2582647 |
Here are the breakdowns by donor category:
Contribution Amounts, Counts and Average Contribution Size, by Party and Donor Category, 2009-Q2
| 2009 - Q2 | Lib | NDP | Grn | BQ | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $ TOT num $ avg | 3878113.54 19487 $199.01 | 711269.13 11171 $63.67 | 192350.47 2926 $65.74 | 68969.94 908 $75.96 | 3957662.18 35217 $112.38 |
| $ < $20 num $ avg | 3998.09 309 $12.94 | 350.00 200 $1.75 | 220.59 14 $15.76 | -- | 35.00 3 $11.67 |
| $ <= $200 num $ avg | 790679.68 14781 $53.49 | 551420.82 10519 $52.42 | 131874.84 2769 $47.63 | 48129.94 855 $56.29 | 2704595.04 32401 $83.47 |
| $ > $200 num $ avg | 3083435.77 4397 $701.26 | 159498.31 452 $352.87 | 60255.04 143 $421.36 | 20840.00 53 $393.21 | 1253032.14 2813 $445.44 |
Labels: Party Finance
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
8:59 AM
11 Comments:
Good stuff.
Are the number of Liberal donors up compared to last year?
Actually yes, now that I look at it. Here is the data by category year-over-year (i.e., comparing second quarters):
------ 2009-Q2 --- 2008-Q2
Anon<$20 309 --- 403
<=$200 14781 --- 8165
> $200 4397 --- 1391
This will all become much easier as soon as I get my module on party finance built, after which you'll just be able to look it up yourself and see it charted. I just need to clone myself to find the time is all.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Great work.
The last line of your table is wrong though - you've summed, rather than weighted-averaged, the average amount of each contribution class.
One thing that makes the number of <=$200 hard to read is that it includes PAC [monthly] contributors.
The dramatic rise for the Liberals is in those maximum or near maximum contributors that as you pointed out are increased at events. And a good many of those make their contribution in the form of monthly payments.
So, for the quarterly reports, the large contributors are split between the over $200 [the ones who do it in one contribution], and the under $200, who pay it in monthly installments.
Anon,
Thank you. It's the result of a rushed job where I quickly wrote an SQL query, but erroneously used
Sum([Amount]/[Number]))
instead of
Sum([Amount])/Sum([Number])
as I should have.
And of course, it makes a huge difference, doesn't it. The overall average donations for the parties go way down, and make MUCH more sense:
----- Wrong ----- Right
Lib $767.69 $199.01
NDP $407.04 $63.67
Grn $484.75 $65.74
BQ $449.50 $75.96
Cons $540.58 $112.38
I appreciate your taking the time to point this out, and have fixed it now. Over the next two weeks at the cottage, I hope to finally have the time to build that page, so that afterwards all I'll have to do is enter the latest numbers and the calculations, layout and charting will all take care of themselves. Getting ready to go there, unfortunately, is what caused me not to stop and do a reality check on those overall averages.
So, I thank you for taking the time to point that out.
Ken, You're right of course. I mean to get around to doing an analysis of the tapped-out-ness of the different parties' contributors. Still packing for the cottage though, so you'll have to wait a day at least for that.
Thanks for the comment.
Question:
There are only 8,005 contributions listed in the Liberal filing. And that is with EACH seperate contribution by an individual shown [IE, if you have a $90 monthly PAC, there will be 3 line item #s shown for those].
So how does that square with the reporting of nearly 20,000 contributors?
Fast moving blog that we have cross postings here.
So a PS to my question. There is something very basic I don't get about the 'gap' between what is in the database of the EC filings, and what we see on the EC webpages.
And I'm guessing it may not be easy to explain that... so that my question may be much more expansive than I thought.
Oh, Ken, the difference is that the contributors < $200 and the count of anonymous contributors of < $20 are not included in the listing you downloaded.
The list only includes contributors greater than $200 in total. I confirmed that for myself a few months ago by spending a bit of time manipulating those files, and also reading the EC instructions to parties on how to fill them out.
The numbers of contributors from different categories sum up within any given quarterly filing.
What you can't do is to sum up the number of contributors ACROSS quarterly filings to get the annual total. That's why only the annual counts are valid. The quarterly ones are interesting within a quarter and to compare with previous quarters. But here is one case where the whole is definitely LESS than the sum of the parts.
So, back to the Liberals in this quarter, there are 4397 contributors who gave $200 or more (across 8005 contributions as you've counted), which if added to 14781 contributors of $200 or less, plus another 309 anonymous contributors of less than $20 makes up the total. You can find this detail at the bottom of any Part 2a of the party quarterly filing (although you have to do some subtraction to get the number of contributors over $200).
Does that help? I'll check back periodically between cottage packing tasks.
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