NDP Scores Big Hike in 3rd Quarter Fundraising
According to data provided exclusively to punditsguide.ca, the NDP is reporting its best ever non-election third quarter fundraising results, at $1.08M from 13,655 donors.
The party's best-ever 3rd quarter came during last year's federal election campaign ($1.89M from 18,297 donors). Its previous best third quarter in a non-election year came in 2006, when it raised $796K from 13,297 contributors.
The NDP's third quarter performance goes most of the way to making up for its below-average performance in the first half of 2009, when the federal party withdrew from direct-ask fundraising in favour of four of its provincial counterparts with provincial elections or leadership conventions on the go. The third quarter also included the party's August national convention in Halifax, which raised convention fees of around $300 dollars per regular delegate.
The return has been filed with Elections Canada, but has not yet been posted to the EC website. Only the Bloc Quebecois return for Q3 is currently available there.
Thanks to the NDP for making this information available. And other party wishing to do the same, can always drop us a line.
The party's best-ever 3rd quarter came during last year's federal election campaign ($1.89M from 18,297 donors). Its previous best third quarter in a non-election year came in 2006, when it raised $796K from 13,297 contributors.
The NDP's third quarter performance goes most of the way to making up for its below-average performance in the first half of 2009, when the federal party withdrew from direct-ask fundraising in favour of four of its provincial counterparts with provincial elections or leadership conventions on the go. The third quarter also included the party's August national convention in Halifax, which raised convention fees of around $300 dollars per regular delegate.
The return has been filed with Elections Canada, but has not yet been posted to the EC website. Only the Bloc Quebecois return for Q3 is currently available there.
Thanks to the NDP for making this information available. And other party wishing to do the same, can always drop us a line.
NEW DEMOCRAT THIRD QUARTER DONOR REPORT
Today the New Democratic Party of Canada tabled its third quarter returns for 2009 with Elections Canada.
2009 3rd Quarter Highlights:
• 2009 represents the best non-election third quarter for the Party to-date.
• The New Democrats received $1,077,005 from 13,655 donors.
• On dollars raised, this is a $481,394.51 increase from the first quarter and a $365,736.54 increase from the second quarter.
• On number of donors, 3,351 more donated in the third quarter than in the first, while 2,484 more donated than in the second
Labels: Party Finance
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
1:31 PM
8 Comments:
As was said with the Liberals' pre-releases, we'll have to see how this one breaks down. I wonder how much of the "fundraising" was convention fees and more importantly what did the NDP net in the 3rd quarter. It will also be interesting to see what there cash position was. It may help to explain why the stood up ramrod straight and helped support the new Conservative government of Stephen Harper!
Hi o.NDP,
I've asked for the breakdown by size as well, and am told there's more to come.
A couple of points of clarification:
* first is that Elections Canada has ruled that convention fees are to be counted as election contributions, so they will be included for the NDP in the 3rd quarter as they were for the Liberals in the 2nd quarter
* second is that we won't see any balance sheet details (such as the party's cash position), since they are only reported in the annual financial statements. The quarterly reports only include political contributions, and transfers into the central party (well, plus a few other details like contributions returned under a couple of sections of the Act, etc., etc.). They do NOT include expenses, and they don't include financial statements.
I am not one of the ones who believed your party's parliamentary strategic decisions were made on the basis of their financial position, as I never saw any evidence of it, nor a single member of theirs claiming that to be the case. I saw a lot of their competitors say so, however.
It seems fairly clear to me that the party made certain decisions in the first part of the year to stand down in fundraising, and hold off on candidate recruitment. The fact that they have been able to ramp up quickly on both those scores in the 3rd quarter just shows that they are a professional political party, and gives greater credence to their earlier explanations.
That said, I earlier estimated that they would have to have raised $1.25M in the 3rd quarter to have fully made up for the slower first and second quarters. They rang in about $170K below that, but still have one more quarter to catch up to or even surpass their 2007 totals.
In my earlier look at the distribution of party contributions by size last month, I noticed that the NDP appeared to have maintained its monthly pre-authorized contributions, but was down in one-time donations. I'm looking forward to seeing what sizes of donations they picked up in this time (their average donation is up from $63.67 last quarter to $78.87 in this one), and also examining the contributions over $200 by date, to see how much was attributable to the convention.
And, of course, I'm looking forward to seeing the progress made by the other parties as well.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
While this is just speculation without a more detailed breakdown by date, I wonder if the widespread rumours that the party was short of cash when they backed off from forcing an election led its supporters to open their wallets.
Hi Bryan, I don't doubt that played some role.
But overall, I'm inclined to follow Occam's Razor (namely that, all other things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely to be the right one).
The NDP says that it didn't ask for money before June 10. And then it did. Everyone who's involved with fundraising knows that the first and oldest rule is "you've got to ask". And the more often you ask, the more you're likely to get.
The current set of facts don't seem to demand any more complex an explanation, do they?
Also, let's keep in mind that the whole broohaha about a possible election and the rumours about the NDP's financial position all happened at the very end of September - in other words only at the tail end of the quarter.
The fact is, even if the NDP had had a banner year of fund-raising in every quarter this year - they and all the other opposition parties would be very hard-pressed to finance a second national election campaign in one year. It typically takes parties years to re-build their cash reserves after an election.
It will be interesting to see what the fourth quarter numbers are like since Liberal morale is taken a dive through the month of October etc...
Contradicting o.NDP's comment:
It isn't just that the NDP deliberately stood down on 1st and 2nd Quarter fundraising.
The NDP, quite the opposite of the Liberals, systematically produces substantial operating surpluses in non-election times. These surpluses, and the size of them, are essential for all parties' financial election readiness.
The Liberal Party of Canada has a very fat and bloated administrative structure, from the days when it was legal for the bagmen to scoop big donations. They have to peddle like mad to keep this monster fed.
Even with a thus far below average fundraising year, the NDP has already produced a $1M to $1.5M operating surplus for the year... and will add to that whatever amount they fundraise in the 4th quarter.
By comparison, despite having a banner year fundraising, the Liberal annual operating surplus will be just what they fundraise in the 4th quarter.
The mythology that the NDP couldn't afford an election comes from an out of context look at the fundraising only, [and explicitly or implicitly from a comparison to how much the Liberals have been fundraising]. That is only part of the picture.
PG is correct that we are a long way from being able to see the cash position numbers of the parties. Not for 9 months.
But the non-election expenses of all the parties are remarkably stable when you consider how wildly revenues fluctuate over time, and how they never know when the next big election campaign debt will come barreling in [and these days, with a significant likelihood of another one of those cash flow hits on its heels].
The variability is in the revenues, and we get those in the quartery filings.
While I did make general comments about party financing, I did not explictly address the comment that the NDP was not financially prepared for an election.
The NDP can afford to, and therefore plans to, go into more campaign debt than do the Liberals. Because the NDP knows that it can rapidly pay down a campaign debt.
Warren Kinsella and others liked to spread around that the reason the NDP was afraid of an election was because they were still $3-4million in debt from the last election.
They would have planned to still be paying down that debt at this point in time. The unplanned low fundraising totals in the 1st and 2nd quarters meant that the amount remaining would be $1or2million more than expected at this point in time. But thats just normal variations in the difference between plans and actual. Not something that would require overhauling strategy.
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