2009 Contributions By Week and Annual Contribution Size
It's time to update two more analyses of the four quarters' worth of party fundraising. First, the contributions over $200 by week.
We read in Jane Taber's blogpost at the beginning of January about Liberal Party president Alf Apps' fundraising letter in which he claimed the Liberals had raised $100K in the last three days of 2009 alone. Indeed, they appear to have raised $319,696 in the last week from large contributors. The NDP raised $218,699 the same week from their large donors, while the Conservatives raised $355,828 from the same group. (We can't tell how much was raised from small donors by week, since those contributions are aggregated by the quarter and not dated.)
[Click on the chart to open an enlarged version.]
The one other week that was notable in the third quarter was the week starting September 27. The Liberal raised $289,387 that week, the NDP's weekly fundraising also spiked somewhat to $87,472, while the Conservatives' dropped to $85,334. You'll recall that this was the week the issue of the opposition's confidence in the government came to a head. The following week the two opposition parties' fundraising dropped off to almost nothing, while the Conservatives' rose slightly.
Next, let's take a look at the distribution of donations by total contribution size over the year. This analysis is an estimate, conducted across the four quarterly reports. It may miss some contributors whose donations did not meet the reporting threshold in any of the quarters, but the sum of whose donations would meet the end-of-year reporting threshold. The value of their donations would still be counted here in the <= $200 category, but would not be properly categorized by total contribution size.
The Liberals continue to rely most heavily on their largest donors of any of the three main parties, obtaining 36.1% of their fundraising from donors at the limit, and 46.1% from donors giving $800 or more annually. This compares with 5.9% and 9.2% for the NDP, and 7.1% and 14.3% for the Conservatives.
While the parties apparently all showed increases in the number of donors over 2007 and 2008, it is not safe to compare sums of quarterly contributors to the annual reports of contributor numbers, due to the high likelihood of double-counting. It's much safer to compare annuals over annuals, which we'll be able to do when the annual reports come out at the end of June.
Safer are comparisons based on amount, so long as the correct base year is used. 2008 was an election year, and thus an unusually high benchmark to try to meet in non-election years. Nevertheless the Liberals bested their 2008 fundraising total, while the NDP and Conservatives topped their 2007 totals, but fell off as expected from their 2008 levels.
* <=$200 count includes counts reported to Elections Canada for both the categories "<=$200" and "<=$20" in each of the first three 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.
We read in Jane Taber's blogpost at the beginning of January about Liberal Party president Alf Apps' fundraising letter in which he claimed the Liberals had raised $100K in the last three days of 2009 alone. Indeed, they appear to have raised $319,696 in the last week from large contributors. The NDP raised $218,699 the same week from their large donors, while the Conservatives raised $355,828 from the same group. (We can't tell how much was raised from small donors by week, since those contributions are aggregated by the quarter and not dated.)
[Click on the chart to open an enlarged version.]
The one other week that was notable in the third quarter was the week starting September 27. The Liberal raised $289,387 that week, the NDP's weekly fundraising also spiked somewhat to $87,472, while the Conservatives' dropped to $85,334. You'll recall that this was the week the issue of the opposition's confidence in the government came to a head. The following week the two opposition parties' fundraising dropped off to almost nothing, while the Conservatives' rose slightly.
Next, let's take a look at the distribution of donations by total contribution size over the year. This analysis is an estimate, conducted across the four quarterly reports. It may miss some contributors whose donations did not meet the reporting threshold in any of the quarters, but the sum of whose donations would meet the end-of-year reporting threshold. The value of their donations would still be counted here in the <= $200 category, but would not be properly categorized by total contribution size.
The Liberals continue to rely most heavily on their largest donors of any of the three main parties, obtaining 36.1% of their fundraising from donors at the limit, and 46.1% from donors giving $800 or more annually. This compares with 5.9% and 9.2% for the NDP, and 7.1% and 14.3% for the Conservatives.
While the parties apparently all showed increases in the number of donors over 2007 and 2008, it is not safe to compare sums of quarterly contributors to the annual reports of contributor numbers, due to the high likelihood of double-counting. It's much safer to compare annuals over annuals, which we'll be able to do when the annual reports come out at the end of June.
Safer are comparisons based on amount, so long as the correct base year is used. 2008 was an election year, and thus an unusually high benchmark to try to meet in non-election years. Nevertheless the Liberals bested their 2008 fundraising total, while the NDP and Conservatives topped their 2007 totals, but fell off as expected from their 2008 levels.
Cumulative distribution of donations and contributors by total donation, by party, First, Second, Third & Fourth Quarters 2009
| $ Amt of donations # of contributors | Lib | NDP | Cons | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $ Amt | Num | $ Amt | Num | $ Amt | Num | |
| TOTAL | $9,564,677 (100.0%) | 69,840 (100.0%) | $4,036,237 (100.0%) | 51,342 (100.0%) | $17,707,846 (100.0%) | 152,141 (100.0%) |
| (% of 2008) | (164.6%) | (226.2%) | (74.6%) | (172.9%) | (83.6%) | (136.0%) |
| (% of 2007) | (213.9%) | (298.1%) | (101.9%) | (220.5%) | (104.3%) | (141.9%) |
| <=$200* | 3,160,203 (33.0%) | 60,877 (87.2%) | 2,707,373 (67.1%) | 48,492 (94.4%) | 12,008,855 (67.8%) | 141,620 (93.1%) |
| <=$400 | 861,744 (9.0%) | 2,800 (4.0%) | 595,830 (14.8%) | 1,872 (3.6%) | 1,838,884 (10.4%) | 5,783 (3.8%) |
| <=$600 | 867,739 (9.1%) | 1,695 (2.4%) | 232,833 (5.8%) | 453 (0.9%) | 838,820 (4.7%) | 1,622 (1.1%) |
| <=$800 | 263,596 (2.8%) | 369 (0.5%) | 127,770 (3.2%) | 176 (0.3%) | 488,534 (2.8%) | 666 (0.4%) |
| <=$1000 | 961,512 (10.1%) | 1018 (1.5%) | 136,173 (3.4%) | 146 (0.3%) | 1,279,157 (7.2%) | 1,315 (0.9%) |
| <=$1100 | 3,050,489 (31.9%) | 2,788 (4.0%) | 202,907 (5.0%) | 186 (0.4%) | 1,227,751 (6.9%) | 1,120 (0.7%) |
| >$1100 | 399,394 (4.2%) | 293 (0.4%) | 33,352 (0.8%) | 17 (0.0%) | 25,845 (0.1%) | 15 (0.0%) |
* <=$200 count includes counts reported to Elections Canada for both the categories "<=$200" and "<=$20" in each of the first three 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
7:50 PM
11 Comments:
Thank you for non partisan insight and effort.
And, thank you for your recent citations of my work in your blog, CS.
That million dollar spike for the Liberals- of over $200 contributions for a single week in mid-April... when was their Convention?
And/or when were delegate fees or the early bird rate due?
KenS, The convention was held in early May, and the convention fees were at or near the entire annual party contribution limit. I don't know what the registration deadline was. There was also a large fundraising dinner in Toronto in April.
Remember that this chart, given that it only shows contributions of $200 or more per quarter, is going to show a lot more of the Liberals' donations than of the other parties', given the greater proportion of Liberal fundraising that comes from this group. It's probably also why the Liberal line looks so much more twitchy, and indeed in Jane Taber's blogpost today, she quotes Alf Apps as saying that their fundraising was very strongly correlated with movements in the polls.
You mentioned in a previous post the date that the party's overall financial reports would be filed. I'm interested in the debt levels. Can you remind us when those reports are due?
Most of the stories on this have emphasised how the Liberals are the only ones to improve over 2008.
But the Liberals were also the only ones to have a bad year fundraising in 2008.
They also have improved over 2007 [which was an even worse year]. But far from "closing the fundrasing gap with the Conservatives" as a few of the stories headlined, the Liberals have just gone from not being able to meet normal non-election expenses to being able to fundraise enough to break-even.
The Liberals fundraising problems turning from bad to severe is generally attributed to Dion's tenure as Leader. But it was the the reduction of the contribution limit to $1100 that sent the Liberals into the tail spin.
Dion was still Leader when the Liberals broke out of severe under fundraising in the second half of 2008.
Since then. with the exception of the one banner Q2 2009, they've been fundraising at breakeven level. That quarter had the hefty delegate fees, and the peak of those big fundraising dinners hustled by the now departed Rossi. Made enough money to pay off the debt, but not sustainable.
Running at breakeven is better than not even managing that, but it won't pay for spending limit $18 million national campaigns.
Spending the limit requires either cash hoards like the Conservative war chest, or the NDP's ability to borrow a lot and repay it out of strong monthly operating surpluses.
Late in the 2008 campaign the LPC triaged $4million dollars out of the campaign budget... because they could not risk another $2M in debt that would leave [on top of the $1-2M they had already incurred]. While the NDP was able to go ahead and incurr about $4M in campaign debt.
Still being unable to produce operating surpluses, the Liberals are stuck with the same financial fundamentals as they had going into the 2008 campaign.
Hi Anon,
They're due at the end of June, 2010. If you have any other questions about dates and deadlines, you will probably find the answer in my annual blogpost of 2010 Approximate Election Data Release Dates.
I've linked to it in the "List of Lists" in the top-right hand corner of the main page of this site (you might be reading through an RSS reader, and aren't familiar with all the resources linked there).
Ken, you make a very good point about fundraising relative to fixed expenses. Given that we have a non-election year to examine in 2009, that might be a good time for me to go back and do a thorough assessment of the parties' net fundraising, when the annual reports appear at the end of June.
Thanks as always for taking the time to read and comment.
Anonymous:
With the exception of the Green Party, I don't expect any surprises about debt levels.
The Liberals will show little or no debt. For the reasons I just outlined, they simply cannot afford it.
Expect the NDP to be still showing a substantial chunk of the campaign debt remaining. While the pull back of first half 2009 fundraising was deliberate, I rather expect it was not 'in the hopper' when they did their 2008 campaign budgeting. So they may be taking longer to retire campaign debt than they had originally planned.
It appears that the GPC did not touch their net campaign debt [after rebates] in 2009, so expect the GPC financial statement to reflect that. They cannot afford debt any more than the Liberal Party, and are paying the piper now with drastic cuts to operating expenses.
I just want to echo CandianSense. Thanks for doingthis extraordinary amount of work, and thanks even more for doing it in such a scrupulously non-partisan way. I challenge anybody to discover your' personal political preferences from this blog. (A good thing. I don't want to know, not from your blog anyway)
Thanks, BGB. Don't ask, don't tell: that's my policy around here! ;-)
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