Time to pass along a few accumulated developments in party apparatus news from here and there:

• Liberal Party - As a result of their posting which ended on January 6, the Liberal Party has hired a new National Director, Ian McKay from B.C., who will be starting in early March, when he's to "continue the modernization of our Party's communication and technological infrastructure and give him the tools to drive our membership engagement process," according to party president Alf Apps' letter to the membership. A financial services consultant, McKay ran in the 2000 general election in West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast, BC. Next on their agenda is the hiring of a new President for the National Liberal Fund: in effect the party's new chief fundraiser.
  
• Conservative Party - A re-organization of the party's Quebec office was first reported by Le Devoir at the end of January, and followed up on by L. Ian MacDonald's weekend column for the Montreal Gazette. The changes appear to have been set in motion when director-general Claude Durand decided late in the year to step down and take care of her son's health concerns. Her resignation took effect at the end of January, by which point she had reportedly identified some 60 candidates in the 75 Quebec ridings (not all of whom have been nominated or announced, apparently). It was revealed this past weekend that in fact the party is now closing its Montreal office, and opening one in Québec City instead, to be run by one of the successful organizers in the recent by-election in Montmagny – L'Islet – Kamouraska – Rivière-du-Loup, Ghislain Maltais, who is also a former provincial Liberal MNA. Maltais will be backed up by Joseph Soares, based out of party headquarters in Ottawa, who was also a part of the by-election campaign team, MacDonald reports.
  
  Meanwhile, new party president John Walsh had the recent task of taking control of the Calgary West, AB Conservative riding association (aka EDA or electoral district association), which had been planning to conduct a referendum requesting an open nomination meeting at its upcoming annual general meeting, even though incumbent M.P. Rob Anders was already renominated last May along with the rest of his caucus. Kevin Libin ran down the inside story in a blogpost for the National Post's online "Full Comment" website, which reports a lot of perspective I had not read before.
  
• Green Party - There have simply not been enough hours in the day to keep on top of every twist and turn in the on-going debate about when and how to elect, re-elect, review or reconstitute the leadership of the Green Party and repair its finances, although party activists have been pouring themselves into debating the issues at great length in the comment sections of a number of different Green blogs, including DaveBagler.ca, Not an Official Green Party Canada Site (NAOGPCS), the democraticSpace.com blog, and of course Report on Greens. I'm unaware whether there has been any final resolution on the leadership convention question. In addition, the party's Revenue Sharing Agreement, whereby the national party distributes a third of its quarterly public subsidy to the EDAs, is also being questioned in light of its current debt situation.
  
  The big news, at least to me, is that there is a third potential leadership candidate on the horizon -- a woman -- who has been meeting people at private dinners, but has not yet announced her campaign. I've made several attempts to find out who it is, but no luck as yet. Apparently a communications plan is in place regarding the timing of the announcement, and the trigger may yet not be pulled. However, she appears to be supported by the BlueGreenBlogger at NAOGPCS, who teased her candidacy at the end of a recent blogpost. The woman, whoever she is, would be joining former federal and Ontario party leader Frank de Jong, and presumably Elizabeth May herself. As the party's constitution is currently written, May's fixed four-year term ends at some point in 2010.
  
• Bloc Québécois - In a reply to a recent blogpost on the partes' quarterly contributions by Chantal Hébert at l'Actualité, the directeur-general of the Bloc Québécois confirmed that their party's approach to fundraising is to favour the constituency associations as well. Gilbert Gardner pointed to 2008 numbers showing that the Bloc raised over $800K through its constituency associations, as compared with some $700K by the party headquarters, and suggested that the 2009 reports from their EDAs which are due this May would show a similar pattern.
  
• New Democrats - The first initiative springing from the NDP's recent Federal Council meeting to plan its strategy leading up to the next election has emerged, and it's focussed on riding fundraising as well. A Facebook group has just popped up for the "Local Victories Challenge", which according to NDP blogger The Jurist at Accidental Deliberations, is designed to make a central investment into riding associations, to help them build their local fundraising infrastructure. We've reported before that party national director Brad Lavigne and leader Jack Layton have been citing statistics about the performance of their candidates who are able to spend close to the spending limit, so it appears this initiative stems from that analysis. After the party's decision in the last election to put in place the financing necessary to spend the national limit (they wound up spending around 84% of the limit in the end), this time according to the promotional material for the Local Victories Challenge they're hoping to finally raise candidate spending up from the 20-25% or so of the limit across the board where it's stayed for the past 5 elections. You'll recall that Professor Bill Stanbury and I studied candidate spending in a two-part series last spring, in which we found that this 20-25% was in fact concentrated into a number of ridings that the party had targetted, and was highly correlated with the percent of the vote NDP candidates obtained.

Tomorrow: some new functionality for the Pundits' Guide database, and the importance of examining candidates' share of the electorate in order to understand vote switching.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP, Party Finance

Thanks to Glen McGregor from this morning's Ottawa Citizen, we learn that a judge in the Ontario Superior Court has, as expected, granted an extension in fundraising time to the remaining 2006 Liberal leadership candidates having outstanding loans on the books.

The candidates will have a further two years to raise the funds necessary to pay off their debts, and must file reports with Elections Canada every six months, as of March. This puts the new deadline at the end of 2011, presumably December 31.

The latest figures for their outstanding loan amounts were reported in the story as follows:

• $395,890 [amount from June 3, 2008; his latest amount outstanding is not listed, as the story says he has been given until next year to pay it off] - Ken DRYDEN - June 30, 2010 deadline, but apparently already deferred to next year by the Chief Electoral Officer
  
• $193,133 - Maurizio BEVILACQUA
• $152,800 - Joe VOLPE
• $131,361 - Gerard KENNEDY
• $130,260 - Martha HALL FINDLEY
• $78,500 - Hedy FRY
• $40,000 - Stéphane DION
• $0 - Carolyn BENNETT
• $0 - Scott BRISON
• $0 - Michael IGNATIEFF
• $0 - Bob RAE

To put this in perspective, Mr. Bevilacqua will have to raise an average of just over $8,000 per month between now and the end of 2011 in order to meet that requirement, while Mr. Dion will have to raise just under $1,700 monthly to do the same.

Put another way, the campaign spending limit in Mr. Bevilacqua's Ontario riding of Vaughan was $103,581 in the last election. His outstanding debt is 1.86 times that amount.

Further to the rules, which were amended for retroactive application to the 2006 Liberal leadership race, these funds must be raised from individuals who have not already donated their one-time maximum contribution of $1,100 to that particular leadership race.

To those unfamiliar with the background of this issue, the reason leadership candidates are given a deadline to repay loans they take out to run their campaigns, is that an unrepaid loan would otherwise constitute a campaign contribution, and there are limits on the size of campaign contributions to leadership campaigns under the Elections Act. Indeed this issue was flagged during the introduction of those Elections Act changes, but never resolved legislatively. Subsequent legislation intended to address the issue of loans, their size, and who they could be taken from, has died on the order paper.

Labels: Party Finance

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.

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

[Welcome National Newswatch readers!]

Both the Conservative and Liberal parties experienced a pullback in fundraising in the fourth quarter of 2009, with each party showing a decline from 2007 levels. Meanwhile the smaller parties had mixed results, with the Bloc Québécois posting a decline from 2007 levels, but the NDP and Greens posting their best ever non-election year Q4 results.

2008 was an election year, which historically shows higher fundraising results for every party. Thus while year over year comparisons are interesting, they are less valid for assessing the strength of a party's fundraising apparatus.

[You can examine all the results in detail, and do your own analyses, by using the Browse Finance$ module here at the Pundits' Guide, and selecting "Quarterly Data".]



Now, to put things in perspective, the Conservatives did raise $4.87M from just over 40,000 donors. It might be their worst fourth quarter since 2004, but it's nothing to sneeze at in a recession, and nearly meets the amount raised in 2007. The party's overall take for the year rings in at $17.7M, down from a record $21.2M in 2008, but it still represents a small increase over 2007 as well.




Similarly, for the Liberals, they posted below average fourth quarter numbers (at $1.91M, they were lower than in 2007 when they raised $1.94M under former leader Mr. Dion), but those results nevertheless sit on top of record second and third quarters earlier this year for an annual take that exceeded even the election year of 2008, and nearly beat the last election year of the new financial regime, 2006. Remember, however, that an overwhelming number of the second quarter contributions were in fact delegate fees to the party's Vancouver convention in May.


The party has also slightly improved its take from the small donor category over the course of 2009 (donations <= $200), and significantly increased their numbers, a positive development given its previous dependence on large donors. This was compensation for the slight reduction in contributions they experienced in the large donor category this quarter, although that was perhaps to be expected, given the number of large donors who were already tapped out from earlier in the year.



We've already reported on the Bloc Québécois' fourth quarter report when it was released 10 days ago, but by way of recap, they appear to have replaced their former pattern of raising most of their money in the fourth quarter from small contributors, with a program to raise money from sustaining contributions spread out over the year. The change appeared to occur in Q4 of 2008.



The NDP would have to be classified as the "comeback kid" of fundraising in 2009. From a brutal, but apparently planned, first half of the year, the party made up the difference in spades over the third and fourth quarters, posting their best ever non-election year Q4 in 2009, and in fact their best ever non-election year, period, with a quarterly take of $1.65M in Q4 for an annual total that broke $4M for the first time ever outside of an election year.




And, in spite of recent stories about the financial situation of the Green Party, it's worth pointing out that they also managed to post a slight increase over 2007, based notably on a large increase in the number of small donors (from 2,893 in 2007 to 4,239 in 2009). The difficulty for that party is that it's still carrying an estimated debt of between $1M and $1.3M from the last election, and is raising just $1.12M annually on top of the $1.86M it receives in party public subsidies each year.



Next, I'll take a closer look at the parties' annual takes by total contribution size, and also by date. This will of course be an estimate until the complete annual reports are available at the end of June.

Labels: Party Finance

The 4th Quarter Financial Return of the Bloc Québécois has now been posted at Elections Canada and entered into the database here; and it shows a very strong performance in 2009 for them, but one that saw contributions spread out much more evenly over the year than has been the case for that party before.

The party raised $208,455.07 in the last three months of 2009 from 1,936 contributors, for an average donation size of $107.67. This yielded an annual take of some $621.5K, the Bloc's best ever non-election year since quarterly numbers were first reported in 2005, and the new party finance regime took effect.



Notably they showed a slight increase in the number and amount of small donations over Q4 in 2008, as well as another slight increase in both numbers and amounts for the large donor category.

However those figures for Q4 are low when compared to earlier non-election Q4's for the Bloc, leading to the conclusion that the party is trying to spread its fundraising more evenly over the year, probably by trying to increase its number of sustaining monthly contributors. We've already noticed this trend before.

The other parties' Q4 returns have yet to appear on the Elections Canada site, either because they haven't been submitted, haven't been received, or haven't been uploaded by EC officials yet. The deadline to submit the 4th quarter returns is the end of January.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Party Finance

As mentioned at the top of the 2010 Calendar, the year in news really kicked off with a deadline occurring on the last day of 2009: the last day for 2006 Liberal leadership candidates to repay loans taken out to finance their leadership campaigns under extensions legally grantable by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen followed up with many of the key figures in a story on this morning's front page. He reports that Scott Brison has now joined Michael Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Carolyn Bennett in paying off all outstanding loans, making his last payment in early December. As we mentioned before, Ken Dryden had been given until the end of June, 2010.

This leaves the following leadership candidates (with mostly unknown loan balances) having to seek the permission of a judge to continue raising funds to pay them off, or else the loans become one or more deemed contributions potentially putting the lenders over the legal contribution limit (the amounts shown below are the amounts reported in the candidates' last public filings with Elections Canada on June 3, 2008, as reported in the Hill Times):

• $627,860 (loans outstanding on June 3, 2008 filing with Elections Canada) - Stéphane DION - McGregor reports that this balance was down to $80,000 plus 6% interest as of July, 2009
• $395,890 - Ken DRYDEN - June 30, 2010
  
• $322,361 - Gerard KENNEDY
• $269,378 - Maurizio BEVILACQUA
• $184,460 - Martha HALL FINDLEY
• $160,290 - Joe VOLPE
• $104,000 - Hedy FRY
• $0 - Carolyn BENNETT
• $0 - Scott BRISON
• $0 - Michael IGNATIEFF
• $0 - Bob RAE

No-one has ever been down this road legally, since this leadership race was the first to be run under the new legislation. It was explained to me by a senior official on one of the campaigns that the contribution limits were changed from $5,400 to $1,100 in the middle of the campaign as well, leaving many contributors in the situation of being unable to follow through with planned pledges in the later stages of the campaign.

We'll have a list of the final contributions at the end of January, as part of the parties' quarterly contribution filings with Elections Canada.

Meantime, the parties' quarterly allowances ("public subsidies") were paid out yesterday. Here's the history of payments:

Annual Allowances to Registered Parties, by Payment Date

Period	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Paid
2009 - Q4	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	04-Jan-10
2009 - Q3	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	01-Oct-09
2009 - Q2	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	02-Jul-09
2009 - Q1	$1,773,903	$1,228,089	$457,790	$673,781	$2,543,328	01-Apr-09
2008 - Q4	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	05-Jan-09
2008 - Q3	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	02-Oct-08
2008 - Q2	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	03-Jul-08
2008 - Q1	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	07-Apr-08
2007 - Q4	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	03-Jan-08
2007 - Q3	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	02-Oct-07
2007 - Q2	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	05-Jul-07
2007 - Q1	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Apr-07
2006 - Q4	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	05-Jan-07
2006 - Q3	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Oct-06
2006 - Q2	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	07-Jul-06
2006 - Q1	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	06-Apr-06
2005 - Q4	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jan-06
2005 - Q3	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Oct-05
2005 - Q2	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jul-05
2005 - Q1	$2,240,772	$956,692	$261,847	$755,740	$1,807,734	01-Apr-05
2004 - Q4	$0	$956,692	$261,847	$322,846	$0.00	07-Jan-05
2004 - Q3	($49,646)	$12,958	$261,847	$0	($563,630)	07-Oct-04
2004 - All	$9,191,054	$1,914,269		$2,411,022	$8,476,872	01-Jan-04

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Labels: Party Finance

As promised, I've pulled together the detailed financial reports for the first three quarters to do another cumulative look at the parties' fundraising performance by contribution size for the year-to-date (you can find the second-quarter analysis here).

And after all that work, the observations remain basically the same: the Liberals have still raised about half their funds from folks who've reached their annual contribution limit (see highlighted cells in the table below); but to do so they seem to have promoted some of their smaller donors to larger-sized donors during the last quarter, while bringing in some new donors at the smaller sizes.

There's been a bit of a frisson between the National Post's online editor and one of its roster of Liberal bloggers about the interpretation of the results. Then the Sun bureau on the Hill weighed in with another story yesterday, covering ground already covered by CP last Friday, but emphasizing the quarter-over-quarter drop, rather than the year-over-year upward trend.

I guess I would just continue to encourage political parties to stay focused on their longer-term objectives, rather than try and manage to some kind of crazy quarter-by-quarter driven news cycle.

Back to the data ... we can see that the Conservative Party is on track with last year, raising about 60% of last year's total by the end of the third quarter, from about the same number of donors. The NDP has raised about 40% of last year's total, by the end of the third quarter, but from 17.3% more donors. The Liberals have already raised 132% of their 2008 total, in just three months, from significantly more donors (67% more than last year).

We'll take another look at these figures at the end of the fourth quarter.

Meantime, as a reminder, you can review the parties' histories of annual and quarterly fundraising performance at the new Browse Finance$ page.

Cumulative distribution of donations and contributors by total donation, by party, First, Second & Third Quarters 2009

$ Amt of donations # of contributors	Lib		NDP		Cons
	$ Amt	Num	$ Amt	Num	$ Amt	Num
TOTAL	$7,654,189 (100.0%)	51,635 (100.0%)	$2,384,631 (100.0%)	34,883 (100.0%)	$12,833,410 (100.0%)	112,970 (100.0%)
(% of 2008)	(131.7%)	(167.2%)	(44.1%)	(117.3%)	(60.6%)	(100.7%)
<=$200*	2,291,891 (29.9%)	44,267 (85.7%)	1,749,768 (73.4%)	33,468 (95.9%)	8,869,733 (69.1%)	105,436 (93.3%)
<=$400	641,208 (8.4%)	2,101 (4.1%)	287,881 (12.1%)	936 (2.7%)	1,336,469 (10.4%)	4,276 (3.8%)
<=$600	732,934 (9.6%)	1,424 (2.8%)	106,887 (4.5%)	209 (0.6%)	595,183 (4.6%)	1,151 (1.0%)
<=$800	225,870 (3.0%)	317 (0.6%)	69,487 (2.9%)	97 (0.3%)	340,523 (2.7%)	465 (0.4%)
<=$1000	867,149 (11.3%)	921 (1.8%)	94,047 (3.9%)	107 (0.3%)	912,538 (7.1%)	936 (0.8%)
<=$1100	2,617,140 (34.2%)	2,392 (4.6%)	66,813 (2.8%)	61 (0.2%)	766,773 (6.0%)	699 (0.6%)
>$1100	277,997 (3.6%)	213 (0.4%)	9,748 (0.4%)	5 (0.0%)	12,190 (0.1%)	7 (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

[Welcome National Newswatch readers!]

Every party has something to brag about in the third quarter fundraising reports deposited with Elections Canada today.

• the Liberals have already raised 110% of their 2008 take by the end of the third quarter
• the NDP has all but made up its gap from the first-half of the year
• the Bloc has moved to step up fundraising significantly from earlier non-election years
• the Greens have maintained and slightly improved their performance from the last non-election year in 2007, and
• the Conservatives have once again raised more money than all the other parties combined, the lion's share of it from small donors

The Conservatives outraised all their competitors, ringing in at $4.5M from 39,785 contributors for an average donation of $113.47.



Next came the Liberals, who posted $1.9M from 17,810 contributors giving an average of $109.17 each.



The NDP posted a record-high non-election third quarter, as we reported exclusively earlier, chiming in at $1.08M from 13,705 contributors, handing over $78.64 per capita.

The Green Party raised $240K from 3,315 donors, who gave on average $72.38.

And the Bloc Québécois earned $221K from 2,688 contributors, who each gave $82.31 on average.

Even the recession hasn't stopped the Conservative fundraising juggernaut, which is ahead of where it was at this point in 2007 (the last non-election third quarter). It raised almost as much from small donors alone ($3,25M from contributors giving $200 or less) than all other parties raised from any category of donor combined ($3.48M).



However, while some Liberals were privately concerned that their third quarter results might reflect a slightly different manifestation of last year's so-called "Ignatieff effect", in fact the Liberals' Q3 total was in-line with the fundraising trend set earlier in the year. And although the majority does still come from large donors, they continued to grow fundraising amongst small donors, both in the total amount and in an increase number of contributors. UPDATE: Early media commentary appears to be focusing on the Liberals' drop from the second quarter. However, their second quarter included the party's convention, the fees for which were equivalent to an individual's annual contribution limit ($1,200). Nevertheless, the Party managed to post a stronger year-over-year third quarter result than last year, during the general election.



We've covered the NDP return across several posts already (the advantage of giving an early heads-up to the Pundits' Guide, hint, hint), along with the Bloc's return when it was first released several weeks ago.

In a subsequent post, we'll take a closer look at the cumulative picture of contributions by size, and see how many contributors are "tapped out" for each party.

Labels: Party Finance

More details of the NDP's third quarter fundraising report show that the growth in their fundraising performance owes as much or more to large donors as to the smaller ones.



While the party did raise a non-election year third quarter party record of $735K -- from a non-election year third quarter party record number of contributors (12,720) in the $200 and under category -- it was the huge jump in the number of large donors over the party's typical Q3 showing (between 256 and 520 in earlier years up to 945 in 2009) that seems to have made the difference. Usually, the NDP only records large numbers of large donors in the fourth quarter or during an election campaign.



The 945 donors contributed a total of $342K, which again is unusually high for the NDP in the third quarter of a non-election year. While the party's biannual convention in Halifax would certainly explain a good chunk of the rise, no comparable bump was observed during their summer 2006 convention in Quebec City two years before.

Most parties struggle to raise money during the summer months, as a quick review of their quarterly performance demonstrates. It is usually the worst quarter of the year for every political party.



Once the contribution details become available, we will be able to see the dates of those contributions, and see the extent to which they correlated with the Halifax convention.

Still party officials are no doubt pleased with the 265% increase in the amount they could collect from large donors outside of an election campaign (from $86K in 2007 to $342K in 2009), during the slowest quarter of the year. It's just that they will have to more than double that performance in the fourth quarter in order to keep pace with their fundraising performance of 2008.

Labels: Party Finance

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.

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

The Bloc Québécois has posted another above average quarter of fundraising results, according to their quarterly return just posted at the Elections Canada website.

The party raised $221K from 2,688 donors in Q3 of 2009, higher than any other third quarter since 2005, except for last year's ... when the election campaign was underway. This represents something like 2.5 to 14 times the amount they raised in earlier non-election year third quarters, and follows on a historically strong first half of the year.



The most notable difference in 2009 is the explosive increase in the number of donors of $200 or less (2,512), which except during elections, had previously been quite low (from 170 to 570, but usually around 250) in all but the fourth quarter of most fiscal years. I think we can conclude that the Bloc has now implemented a monthly pre-authorized contribution plan, and appears to be having a fair bit of success in rolling it out this year. The amount raised from donors of $200 and less is shown in the dark lower parts of the bars seen here, while contributions from large donors are shown in the lighter colour.



If the Bloc is able to post even a typical non-election year fourth quarter of $330K, it will match its best ever fundraising performance since the elimination of corporate and labour contributions and the introduction of the public subsidy. On the other hand, if it continues to post these kinds of above-average numbers, it will be raising centrally at the levels last seen before the subsidy was introduced. Again the dark-coloured parts of the bars below show the amount raised from individuals giving $200 or less. The rest is from individuals giving large contributions, or from corporate or labour contributions (when they were allowed pre-2004).



Insta-pundits have often been quick to look at the Bloc's level of central fundraising, compare it in a ratio to the public subsidy their vote share has entitled them to, and conclude that the Bloc is "dependent" on the allowance funds.

However, I would encourage those wanting to undertake a more serious analysis to include riding association fundraising and candidate fundraising before drawing any simplistic, and possibly erroneous, conclusions. Of course that's a lot more work, and has the danger of possibly giving you the answer you didn't want to find.

The fact is that the Bloc has reorganized the way it structures its party financing several times if you read their financial statements carefully (especially the notes to the statements). Formerly, it credited ALL fundraising and membership dues originating from a riding to the riding association, in return for a central tithe and a service fee for each membership card processed, but reported all fundraising centrally. Subsequent changes to the legislation which required riding associations to report separately from the central party but introduced public funding, saw the party eliminate the central tithe, leave the fundraising in the ridings (where it was now reported), and run the centre using the subsidy and election rebate plus some year-end central direct fundraising.

Summing up all the riding association fundraising and adding it into the mix, however, shows that the total Bloc fundraising efforts actually increased during this time, although much of it was reported in the ridings. [Note that this chart was previously prepared by me in response to a request by the ThreeHundredEight.com website, and was first published there.] Notice that the dark coloured bars here are central fundraising, while riding association fundraising is in grey and the public subsidy is in white. I did not take the time to include candidate fundraising in the mix, but a more complete analysis would do so, time permitting. Note that you can click on the chart to view its full-sized version.



So, the question I have now, is whether the increase we are starting to see in central Bloc fundraising will be mirrored in lower fundraising totals for the ridings (which only report annually and not until the following May). I guess we'll have to table that question for later, but should it turn out to be the case, we might guess that the party changed its financing structure at least in part to avoid looking "dependent" on the subsidy to those focused on the central party's performance, but it's more likely for some other internal reason.

However, if it turns out that the increased central fundraising is additive to existing riding fundraising levels, I think we can conclude that the Bloc is positioning itself to survive in case the Conservatives are able to make good on their preferred option of eliminating the subsidy altogether.

Meanwhile the other parties' third quarter returns either have not yet been submitted OR have not yet been posted to the Elections Canada website. They are not due until the end of October. I wrote a look-ahead to the 3rd quarter results a few weeks ago here, in case you missed it.

Labels: Bloc Québécois, Party Finance

Yesterday was the last day of the third quarter of 2009, meaning that any funds raised by the parties up until midnight will have to be reported to Elections Canada shortly, and will be publicly released at the end of the month. I guess recent history suggests that anyone who thinks they did well will start pre-releasing and spinning their numbers in time for the pundit panels any day now.

But, the two parties whose performance will be most closely watched are (i) the Liberals, to see if they can maintain the rate of increase in fundraising they achieved in the first two quarters, and (ii) the NDP, to see if they can recover as they maintained they would, after withdrawing from direct-ask fundraising during the first two quarters in favour of their provincial cousins with leadership races and provincial elections.


As we've noted here earlier, in an analysis of party contributions by donation size, the Liberals appeared to emphasize large donations in the first half of the year, the result of several fundraising dinners costing the maximum contribution size, and the price of delegate fees to attend their biannual convention in Vancouver (see graph below of Fundraising by Week, which shows peaks for the Toronto fundraising dinner and Vancouver convention). They showed almost 2,000 donors of $1,000 or more (representing about 38% of their funds raised to date), compared with 500 or so in the same category for the Conservatives, representing 6% or so of their fundraising totals.



If the remaining 3,900 or so Liberal donors over $200 each gave the remainder of their annual maximum in the 3rd quarter, the most the party could raise would be another $2.25M (compared with the $3.1M they raised from large donors in the 2nd quarter, and $1.8M in the 1st). This means that to maintain their current pace of fundraising (they've raised approximately $5.7M so far this year), they'll have to raise more money from their small contributors ($200 or less), certainly possible but a more organizationally-demanding undertaking, or else find and tap new donors both large and small. Historically, however, the Liberals have relied more on large and corporate donors, as the following chart demonstrates (individual donors of $200 or less are shown in dark red, with individual donors above $200, and corporate, labour and other donors all shown in light red).



Now while the Liberals raised $1.86M in the 3rd quarter of last year, that was during an election campaign. A more typical recent 3rd quarter for them was the $793K they raised in 2007, the $867K they raised in 2006, or the $1.06M they raised in 2005. However, to maintain their new pace of fundraising, we would expect to see numbers in the range of $2.0-$2.5M.



The NDP has a different kind of challenge. It had a difficult 1st quarter in 2009, similar to its 1st quarter in 2005. However its 2nd quarter was in line with recent years, both in number of donors, and average donation size in each of the major categories ($200 or less, and over $200). And while they fell off in the number and average size of small donations in the 1st quarter, most of the gap occurred in donations over $200. This kind of data would be consistent with the explanation that the central party did not do direct ask fund-raising during the 1st quarter, but continued to receive its regular monthly contributions from members and direct deposit donors.

The NDP raised $1.89M in the 3rd quarter of 2008, but again this was during an election, and so above average. A more typical 3rd quarter for them would have been the $720K they raised in 2005 or the $796K they raised in 2006 (they raised just $595 in the 3rd quarter of 2007, but posted stronger 1st and 4th quarters that year). So if we say that they needed to catch up to where they were at this stage in 2007, they would have to raise something in the order of $1.25M or so in the 3rd quarter; and if our interpretation of why their 1st and 2nd quarter numbers looked like they did is correct, we'd expect to see most of that come from their larger (i.e., over $200) donor-base. And of course their convention was held in August, with convention fees in the $300 range.

Historically, the NDP has relied more on small donors ($200 and less), although once the 76% tax creditable threshold moved from $200 to $400, they did show some commensurate improvement in the larger-size category. Again, contributions from small donors are shown in dark orange, with the remaining categories shown in light orange.



Meantime, the parties' quarterly allowances ("public subsidies") were paid out yesterday. Here's the history of payments:

Annual Allowances to Registered Parties, by Payment Date

Period	Lib	NDP	Grn	BQ	Cons	Paid
2009 - Q3	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	01-Oct-09
2009 - Q2	$1,815,230	$1,256,701	$468,455	$689,478	$2,602,581	02-Jul-09
2009 - Q1	$1,773,903	$1,228,089	$457,790	$673,781	$2,543,328	01-Apr-09
2008 - Q4	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	05-Jan-09
2008 - Q3	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	02-Oct-08
2008 - Q2	$2,187,074	$1,264,370	$324,231	$758,350	$2,623,890	03-Jul-08
2008 - Q1	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	07-Apr-08
2007 - Q4	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	03-Jan-08
2007 - Q3	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	02-Oct-07
2007 - Q2	$2,140,040	$1,237,179	$317,258	$742,041	$2,567,462	05-Jul-07
2007 - Q1	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Apr-07
2006 - Q4	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	05-Jan-07
2006 - Q3	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	04-Oct-06
2006 - Q2	$2,096,926	$1,212,255	$310,867	$727,092	$2,515,737	07-Jul-06
2006 - Q1	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	06-Apr-06
2005 - Q4	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jan-06
2005 - Q3	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Oct-05
2005 - Q2	$2,282,186	$974,374	$266,686	$769,708	$1,841,145	01-Jul-05
2005 - Q1	$2,240,772	$956,692	$261,847	$755,740	$1,807,734	01-Apr-05
2004 - Q4	$0	$956,692	$261,847	$322,846	$0.00	07-Jan-05
2004 - Q3	($49,646)	$12,958	$261,847	$0	($563,630)	07-Oct-04
2004 - All	$9,191,054	$1,914,269		$2,411,022	$8,476,872	01-Jan-04

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Labels: Party Finance

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.

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

Last night's nomination results have been entered into the database now, along with the new Conservative candidates announced last weekend, but I'll have to write them up later today.

Also, all candidate financial return data has been updated from the 2004 and 2006 elections. Next up is a big update on the 2008 candidate financial data, so that we're free and clear to concentrate on the next election.

Thanks to everyone who took a second to get in touch with results last night.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Party Finance

For some time I've been collecting and organizing the party financial data for inclusion in a systematic way into the Pundits' Guide database. Now, I've finally had enough uninterrupted time to assemble it into its own module. Presenting, for your interest and amusement: the first version of the "Browse Finance$" page.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Annual contribution data is available from 2000 to 2008 at present. Of course, the 2009 data won't be available until around this time next year.
• Quarterly contribution data is available from 2005 (when its collection was first mandated) forward, on its own tab.
• You can drill down by Party or Year, or any combination of both, on either tab. The tables and charts will redraw themselves appropriately.
• Remember that there were a number of rule changes along the way, so that prior to 2004 contributions came from Individuals, Corporations, Labour organizations, and a variety of Other changing categories as well that I've lumped in together. Post-2004 only Individuals could contribute to federal political parties.
• Most bars in the charts break down contributions by donation size as well. Technically there are 3 categories: (i) anonymous contributions of <= $25/$20 (it used to be $25, but later became $20), (ii) contributions of <= $200 where the donor is known to the party, but their names are not reported to Elections Canada, (iii) named contributors of > $200 over the year, whose names must be reported. In some older data, the donation size is not always reported alongside the donor category by Elections Canada in their datasets (the case for 2000 here). So the convention I followed was that I lumped (i) and (ii) together in the '$200 and under' category on the charts, and I lumped the 'size unknown' in with the 'over $200' category. I find it nice to always see the proportion of funds coming from these two general groupings.
• In every table, you will find little Elections Canada logos, which are links that point to the parties' annual or quarterly reports as appropriate, so you can jump directly there to consult the original data (and proofread my work, if you feel up to it). I find this makes it a lot easier to find the return I want, rather than navigating through their search engines.
• All the data was manually entered by me from returns available on the Elections Canada website, where it is only available in "as submitted" form (none of it is "as reviewed" there at all, yet).
  

As always, there's more to come on this front, but with this module and core dataset in place it should be easier to add quarterly reports in future, and to add more data to the module as well (such as the public subsidies, net transfers in and out of the federal party, and the parties' financial statements). I'll also be providing some additional metrics and analysis in the associated pundit queries in due course.

I hope you like this new page at the Pundits' Guide. Please feel free to provide feedback in the comments section or to me directly by email. And take a second to pick one or two quarterly or annual returns and proofread my data entry work, to help other readers of the Guide.

Labels: Data Analysis, Party Finance

I'm sorry to rather directly disagree with a well-regarded member of the Press Gallery, but this story on the 2nd quarter fundraising reports by the registered parties is just wrong:

The federal Tories slid to second place in party contributions for the second quarter of 2009 — which might help explain the recent election talk of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Returns filed with Elections Canada show that for the three-month period to the end of June, the Conservatives attracted $3,957,662 in contributions, ahead of their take for the same period last year, which was about $3.5 million.

Unfortunately the reporter in question misunderstands the party reports, and cites the totals for central fundraising + intra-party transfers from riding associations. This is like comparing apples to oranges; like adding the change you receive when purchasing an item with cash, to your salary, and then summing them together as your income.

The parties' quarterly reports only require the reporting of transfers from riding associations INTO the central party coffers, but alas do not report on the transfers the other way (i.e., from the central party OUT TO the ridings), which are only reported on at the end of the year. The correct figure to cite might be NET transfers or even the total of central party + riding fundraising. But including transfers in only one direction is misleading, and particularly so in the post-election period where loans, advances, rebates and other accounting issues between central parties and ridings are being settled out.

Thus, counting only the political contributions, the Conservatives are slightly ahead of the Liberals. Including the riding transfers, the Liberals are ahead of the Conservatives, but this total doesn't signify much more than the total amount of different subtotals on the quarterly reports.

In any event, this reporter was not the only one to make the mistake, as a similar error was made earlier this past weekend on the CBC TV Bureau "Political Bytes" blog. However, others who should know better are already tweeting the erroneous information around. Thanks to a reader for drawing the clipping to my attention.

In the very near future, readers of the Pundits' Guide will have a much easier reference on party finance to consult, but until then just remember: you can't add fundraising numbers together with intra-party transfers for a given quarter and claim that one party is ahead of another and have it mean anything significant.

Labels: Party Finance

[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.

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 $767.69 $199.01	711269.13 11171 $407.04 $63.67	192350.47 2926 $484.75 $65.74	68969.94 908 $449.50 $75.96	3957662.18 35217 $540.58 $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