In the world of politics today each candidate must amass a significant war chest in order to present themselves to the public in a positive light and to fend off negative attacks from the other candidates. But where does this money come from? Will the candidate, once elected, shower some legislative love upon his ardent contributors? While I can’t answer the latter question for you, I can answer the former, thanks to the Federal Election Commission’s practice of collecting this information along with each donor’s employer, and subsequently making the information public. What follows is the Federal Election Commission’s data consisting of campaign contributions aggregated by the donor’s employer and below that is another list showing the top five sectors based on donation totals within that sector for each candidate.
Here are the top employers and aggregated amounts donated to each campaign so far for 2012:
Barack Obama
Microsoft Corp – $171,573 Comcast Corp – $113,800 University of California – $107,501 Harvard University – $99,975 Google Inc – $95,066
Ron Paul
US Army – $24,503 US Air Force – $23,335 US Navy – $17,432 Mason Capital Management – $14,000 Microsoft Corp – $13,398
Mitt Romney
Goldman Sachs – $367,200 Credit Suisse Group – $203,750 Morgan Stanley – $199,800 HIG Capital – $186,500 Barclays Capital – $157,750
Rick Santorum
Blue Cross/Blue Shield – $18,000 Universal Health Services – $17,250 Kimber Manufacturing – $12,300 Achristavest – $10,000 El Dorado Holdings – $10,000
* source Federal Election Commission data as of January 2, 2012 aggregated by opensecrets.org
As you can tell from the information above, it seems that Mitt Romney’s top aggregate contributors appear to be universally employed in the finance sector while Barack Obama enjoys heavy donations from software companies and universities. Ron Paul’s top aggregated contributors seem to be primarily employed by the United States military. Rick Santorum’s top two aggregated donor employers are health insurance companies followed by Kimber Manufacturing, which is a small arms manufacturer, Achristavest, which is a waterfront development company in Santorum’s home state of Pennsylvania, and El Dorado Holdings, which is a real estate investment company in California.
Next we have the top aggregate contributions by the donor’s sector:
Barack Obama
Retired – $7,708,795 Misc. Business – $4,533,530 Lawyers & Law Firms – $4,091,111 Education – $2,046,360 Banking, Securities & Investment – $1,797,128
Ron Paul
Misc. Business – $672,522 Retired – $665,966 Candidate Committees – $500,000 Health Professionals – $183,206 Computers / Internet – $166,764
Mitt Romney
Banking, Securities & Investment – $3,807,267 Retired – $3,365,252 Real Estate – $1,700,330 Lawyers & Law Firms – $1,612,645 Misc. Business – $1,393,895
Rick Santorum
Retired – $79,750 Misc Business – $75,376 Real Estate – $67,950 Banking, Securities & Investment – $41,500 Insurance – $38,650
* source Federal Election Commission data as of January 2, 2012 aggregated by opensecrets.org
It appears that retired folks are contributing heavily to all campaigns, showing up as either the first or second largest group of donors in all four candidate’s campaigns so far. Barack Obama and Rick Santorum saw retired folks as their largest sector of individual donations followed by miscellaneous businesses. Barack Obama stands out as being the only candidate having education end up in his top five campaign donation sectors and Rick Santorum is the only one with insurance claiming a top five slot. Mitt Romney saw his largest amount of donations come from banking which includes those employed in the securities and investment industry. And Ron Paul, perhaps not unsurprisingly given his propensity for receiving many small donations from a wide array of individuals, had his largest group of contributions come from miscellaneous businesses. Ron Paul is also notable in this data for being the only candidate that does not have the banking sector show up anywhere in his top five sectors for campaign contributions, as well as being the only candidate that has health professionals and computers/internet make his top five list.