Where Will Parties Find Their Money In The Second Half of 2009
Last quarter, I took a moment to examine the full list of party contributors over $200 for each of the three largest political parties, and break them down by amount contributed by total donation. There have been a few requests to repeat that analysis for this quarter, the findings of which are presented below.
However there's a slight difference, being the second quarter, in that we now have to sum a donor's cumulative contributions over both quarters. We can tell (or roughly tell) who the donors are across quarters and the amount of their total donation, if they gave $200 or more in both quarters. If not though, they might also be double-counted in the number of contributors of $200 or less in another quarter, but at least the double-counting methodology is consistent across parties. Contributor counts are therefore only authoritative in the annual returns, but can still be examined for trends in the quarterly returns.
So here are the cumulative contributions by total donation size across the first and second quarters for the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives. The purpose of such an analysis is to estimate how many of each party's donors are "tapped out", that is how many have already given the maximum annual contribution of $1100 or are on track to. While the Bloc and Green numbers are not presented here, they were calculated and found to have a similar pattern to the NDP (although with lower totals), except in one regard noted below.
As Liberal national director Rocco Rossi noted last month, the Liberals have already raised 98.3% half-way through this year of what they raised during all of 2008, and they did so from 111.1% of the number of contributors. And indeed the number of individual contributors to the Liberal Party in 2008 (30,872) was itself higher than any year going back to 2004.
But 38.1% of the money raised in the first half of 2009 has come from 1,954 contributors who have now given $1,000 or more, meaning they can't contribute any more money for the rest of the year, and 49.6% of it was raised from 2,635 contributors who have given $800 or more.
This contrasts with 6.3% of Conservative contributions and 3.1% of NDP contributions coming from 474 and 49 donors respectively who have given $1,000 or more; and 13.8% of Conservative contributions and 4.0% of NDP contributions coming from 1,105 and 81 donors respectively who have given $800 or more.
Put another way, if the parties could only raise money from their current contributors over $200 for the rest of the year, the maximum the Liberals could raise from those folks would be $2.25M, the maximum the Conservatives could raise would be $2.3M, and the maximum the NDP could raise would be $431K.
On the other hand, if they found no new contributors for the rest of the year, and could only raise from their current number of contributors of $200 or less, the Liberals could raise a further $29.8M, the Conservatives a further $70.1M, and the NDP a further $21.7M.
So the challenge for the Liberal Party if they want to maintain and augment their increased level of fundraising will be to increase the amount of money contributed by each remaining donor of $200 or less, while the NDP and Conservatives still have roughly 40% of their donor counts from last year they can still approach for a first contribution (and in fact 60% of the number of Bloc and Green contributors from last year have yet to make a contribution this year as well).
But it will be challenging based on historic trends for the Liberals to increase the average donation size of contributors under $200, as their average donation in this category has fallen below that of the Conservatives in most every quarter since 2005 when quarterly returns were first mandated. The alternative for them is to identify large numbers of new donors, in order to try and match the 111,862 donors who gave a contribution to the Conservative party last year.
You can now review the parties' histories of annual and quarterly fundraising performance at the new Browse Finance$ page, by the way.
* <=$200 count includes counts reported to Elections Canada for both the categories "<=$200" and "<=$20" in each of the first two quarters; other counts calculated by totalling contributions for each donor (i.e., for each unique combination of firstname + middlename + lastname), and then counting by total contribution size for each donor
However there's a slight difference, being the second quarter, in that we now have to sum a donor's cumulative contributions over both quarters. We can tell (or roughly tell) who the donors are across quarters and the amount of their total donation, if they gave $200 or more in both quarters. If not though, they might also be double-counted in the number of contributors of $200 or less in another quarter, but at least the double-counting methodology is consistent across parties. Contributor counts are therefore only authoritative in the annual returns, but can still be examined for trends in the quarterly returns.
So here are the cumulative contributions by total donation size across the first and second quarters for the Liberals, NDP and Conservatives. The purpose of such an analysis is to estimate how many of each party's donors are "tapped out", that is how many have already given the maximum annual contribution of $1100 or are on track to. While the Bloc and Green numbers are not presented here, they were calculated and found to have a similar pattern to the NDP (although with lower totals), except in one regard noted below.
As Liberal national director Rocco Rossi noted last month, the Liberals have already raised 98.3% half-way through this year of what they raised during all of 2008, and they did so from 111.1% of the number of contributors. And indeed the number of individual contributors to the Liberal Party in 2008 (30,872) was itself higher than any year going back to 2004.
But 38.1% of the money raised in the first half of 2009 has come from 1,954 contributors who have now given $1,000 or more, meaning they can't contribute any more money for the rest of the year, and 49.6% of it was raised from 2,635 contributors who have given $800 or more.
This contrasts with 6.3% of Conservative contributions and 3.1% of NDP contributions coming from 474 and 49 donors respectively who have given $1,000 or more; and 13.8% of Conservative contributions and 4.0% of NDP contributions coming from 1,105 and 81 donors respectively who have given $800 or more.
Put another way, if the parties could only raise money from their current contributors over $200 for the rest of the year, the maximum the Liberals could raise from those folks would be $2.25M, the maximum the Conservatives could raise would be $2.3M, and the maximum the NDP could raise would be $431K.
On the other hand, if they found no new contributors for the rest of the year, and could only raise from their current number of contributors of $200 or less, the Liberals could raise a further $29.8M, the Conservatives a further $70.1M, and the NDP a further $21.7M.
So the challenge for the Liberal Party if they want to maintain and augment their increased level of fundraising will be to increase the amount of money contributed by each remaining donor of $200 or less, while the NDP and Conservatives still have roughly 40% of their donor counts from last year they can still approach for a first contribution (and in fact 60% of the number of Bloc and Green contributors from last year have yet to make a contribution this year as well).
But it will be challenging based on historic trends for the Liberals to increase the average donation size of contributors under $200, as their average donation in this category has fallen below that of the Conservatives in most every quarter since 2005 when quarterly returns were first mandated. The alternative for them is to identify large numbers of new donors, in order to try and match the 111,862 donors who gave a contribution to the Conservative party last year.
You can now review the parties' histories of annual and quarterly fundraising performance at the new Browse Finance$ page, by the way.
Cumulative distribution of donations and contributors by total donation, by party, First & Second Quarters 2009
| $ Amt of donations # of contributors | Lib | NDP | Cons | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $ Amt | Num | $ Amt | Num | $ Amt | Num | |
| TOTAL | $5,709,957 (100.0%) | 34,312 (100.0%) | $1,306,880 (100.0%) | 21,356 (100.0%) | $8,319,202 (100.0%) | 74,049 (100.0%) |
| (% of 2008) | (98.3%) | (111.1%) | (24.1%) | (71.9%) | (39.3%) | (66.2%) |
| <=$200* | 1,531,843 (26.8%) | 28,469 (83.0%) | 1,014,344 (77.6%) | 20,698 (96.9%) | 5,614,902 (67.5%) | 68,865 (93.0%) |
| <=$400 | 496,971 (8.7%) | 1,655 (4.8%) | 121,014 (9.3%) | 392 (1.8%) | 951,553 (11.4%) | 3,003 (4.1%) |
| <=$600 | 663,620 (11.6%) | 1,288 (3.8%) | 95,776 (7.3%) | 185 (0.9%) | 441,791 (5.3%) | 854 (1.2%) |
| <=$800 | 187,604 (3.3%) | 265 (0.8%) | 23,624 (1.8%) | 32 (0.1%) | 163,924 (2.0%) | 222 (0.3%) |
| <=$1000 | 657,006 (11.5%) | 681 (2.0%) | 11,474 (0.9%) | 1,212 (0.1%) | 624,115 (7.5%) | 631 (0.9%) |
| <=$1100 | 1,934,211 (33.9%) | 1,770 (5.2%) | 40,650 (3.1%) | 37 (0.2%) | 514,966 (6.2%) | 469 (0.6%) |
| >$1100 | 238,702 (4.2%) | 184 (0.5%) | -- (0.0%) | 0 (0.0%) | 7,950 (0.0%) | 5 (0.1%) |
* <=$200 count includes counts reported to Elections Canada for both the categories "<=$200" and "<=$20" in each of the first two quarters; other counts calculated by totalling contributions for each donor (i.e., for each unique combination of firstname + middlename + lastname), and then counting by total contribution size for each donor
Labels: Party Finance
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
8:58 PM
14 Comments:
This is impressive.
Take some time to digest.
Interesting.
The >1100$ must include donations to ridings and stuff, right? Not neccesarily people who have broken the law...I would hope?
Hi Ken, thanks.
CalgaryGrit:
It's usually an artefact of the methodology. I'm grouping the donors by unique combination of lastname, firstname and initial. So if there is a mother and daughter or father and son having the exact same name, their contributions will be added together, as I have no other way of distinguishing them.
Now in the case where there aren't two people with the same name, then we could be into a situation where the person inadvertantly overcontributed and the party will have to return the difference at the end of the year. I've seen this happen before, where the person thinks the second donation is going to the riding, but it got run through the party's account, making it count under the national limit.
And, yes, there are actually a few single contributions greater than the limit. The parties will again have to return the difference at the end of year.
One hopes they wouldn't try and take advantage of this to deliberately raise overcontributions as a way of obtaining unreportable interest-free loans through the back door, but I guess people who truly want to break the rules will always find a way. I just prefer to believe that most people will behave ethically, knowing that oversights do happen.
But no, to answer your other question, this does not include riding contributions yet. I would like to include them in time, but it's a lot of work, and baby steps are in order to do it properly.
Some media organizations unfortunately muddied the waters this past quarter by claiming that the transfers into the parties from the ridings were "contributions", and then claiming this put your party ahead of its nemesis.
But while parties have to report transfers IN on a quarterly basis, they only report transfers OUT on only an annual basis. Net transfers IN and OUT would be the only proper measurement of riding contributions to the parties, and we can't calculate that quarterly. And of course individual contributions to the ridings are only reported annually, and contributions to candidates only reported after the election. Joan Bryden of Canadian Press reported it correctly, but a few others got it quite wrong.
Sorry I didn't see these comments earlier; my comment notifications stopped coming for some reason.
But thanks both of you for taking the time to read and comment.
For the heck of it, with a quick look at your breakdown... I'm going to estimate that the Liberals raise 2 to 3 million in the second half of 2009. That would be less than half what was raised in the first 6 months.
And it could be less, if they aren't making at least some improvements in smaller donations.
Mind you, an election, or just a month of election scares, might improve that. But parties don't always raise much more during elections.
While the Liberals may not be completely tapped out with max and near max contributions [and I guessed some more of them as part of my estimate for the rest of 2009], there is definitely no sustainable growth in fundraising in that sector.
In fact, the LPC will be doing very well to repeat that amount of high end sector 2009 fundraising in 2010... let alone grow it.
The sustained and sustainable growth that determines how much can be raised is in that under $400 category. Thats where the conservative money machine dominance lies, and its the NDPs much more modest strength.
The LPC still has not come fully equal to the NDP in that category, and has to multiply 4 or 5 times from the [improved] place where they are to catch up with the Conservatives.
Further on PGs comment about the overcontributions.
I share the confidence that its unintentional and parties return them when all the bookeeping is done.
When the Q1 returns were in I browsed some pages of the Liberal contributors just to get an overall idea. And I noticed a number of times that $1100 contributors had given $5, $10 or $25 contributions before... or ocassionaly after.
There are a very high number and proportion of those overcontributions. That is likely a consequence of how non routine this fundraising process is [especially because the bulk of them seem to be done at or in the follow-up to gala events].
Speaking of which, expense reports for 2009 don't come in until end of June next year, but it will be interesting to see how expensive this high end fundraising push has been.
Thats also the coup de grace in it being unlikely to repeat this in 2010. The expenses for repeating will be essentially the same, and a high percentage of donors recruited in such a manner don't repeat or don't repeat at the same level.
If we have not had an election by then, they might be able to draw out this characteristically one shot enthusiasm a little longer... but there are at least substantially diminishing returns to it.
Rossi would be accustomed at the Cancer Society to finding ever reaching numbers of larger donors. But that is much harder for a poltical party, not to mention that the draw of the Cancer society has no equal even among NGOs.
Hi again Ken,
Even now, if you examine Part 2c of the Liberals' 2nd quarter return, you'll see the contributions they had to return to people at the end of 2008 and some from Q1 and Q2 of 2009. Presumably these were inadvertent over-contributions (210 of them totalling $42,086.71).
In the same period, the Conservative Party returned 91 contributions totalling $17,542.00, while the Green Party returned 22 contributions totalling $976.68, and the NDP disposed of one anonymous contribution of $317.21. The Bloc Québécois filed a NIL Part 2c in 2009-Q2.
I did not deduct those from the reported totals, although perhaps I should. So much to do, so little time ....
I stand to be corrected, but I believe you can give $1100 to riding associations, plus $1100 to a party and also $1100 to an active leadership campaign. Meaning $3300, if properly distributed among those three entities would be legal for 2009. I think you can give a further $1100 during an election campaign to a candidate or combination of candidates.
Individuals can make all those contributions.
But this only the data for contributions to the [national] praty itself. so $1100 is the max.
Hi Mark:
You can give (per s.405(1) of the Elections Act):
* a maximum of $1100 to a registered party +
* a maximum of another $1100 to a riding association OR candidate of a particular political party +
* a maximum of another $1100 to the leadership candidates in a particular leadership contest.
(it says $1000 in that section of the Act, but talks about increases in another section)
So, yes, you have that part quite correct.
The numbers in this blogpost, just to be clear however, are the quarterly filings of the registered parties, and thus cover ONLY the first category of the three. The others aren't even reported quarterly. So, yes, the $1100 maximum does apply.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
You too, Ken.
But I believe the Leadership campaigns, particularly the past campaigns which are in the process of retiring debt, show up in quarterly filings, as they are now directed contributions which flow via the party. That's my guess as to why as calgarygrit mentions above, you have found individuals whose contributions show up in the report as > $1100.
But I believe the Leadership campaigns, particularly the past campaigns which are in the process of retiring debt, show up in quarterly filings, as they are now directed contributions which flow via the party. That's my guess as to why as calgarygrit mentions above, you have found individuals whose contributions show up in the report as > $1100.
Hi Mark, and thanks for commenting again. In responding, I'm taking a look at Part 2b of the Liberals' 2nd Quarter 2009 fundraising return, which is the "Statement of Directed Contributions Received for Transfer to a Leadership Contestant".
That list contains names not found in Part 2a, the "Statement of Contributions Received" (i.e., by the party itself); and also contains names of contributors who *are* found in the party contributors list, but for different amounts on different dates.
You tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm reading Part 2a as a whole separate list of contributions from Part 2b, and I'm reading Part 2b as the list of contributions to the leadership contestants not included in Part 2a. I did not include any Part 2b names or totals, either in my work in this blogpost, or in the new "Browse Finance$" module (from which you can find the direct links to all the parties' financial returns now, by the way).
Which is why I'm confident in saying again that the party maximum of $1100 is what applies to the dataset used for this blogpost.
Make sense? Or did I miss something else?
PG's answer I think is definitive.
But let me also point out/repeat that if you browse the quarterly filing for $1100 contributions, it is very common that the same person has also given very small contributions that it is eay to see people forgetting they did [or that they weren't supposed to do].
I'll bet that most or the vast majority of those overcontributions are also under $1200.
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