Obama Has Edge Over Romney in Small Donors

By Alina Selyukh and Alexander Cohen

February 5, 2012 8:01 PM EST

(Reuters) - It does not guarantee him re-election in November, but it is an advantage President Barack Obama is likely to carry into the fall: a broad base of supporters who have given him the symbolic vote of confidence with a donation of less than $200.

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Known as small donors, these people are personally invested in a candidate's march to becoming president, many ready to become active at the ground level as foot soldiers of the campaign.

Financial disclosures last week showed Obama's campaign in 2011 raised 60 percent of its funds, or $58.5 million, from donors who gave less than $200.

The average listed donation to the Obama campaign in the last three months of the year was between $100 and $200, according to a Reuters analysis of the Federal Election Commission filings.

Campaigns are not required to list donors who gave less than $200 in total, but they have to list those who exceeded that amount even if it came in multiple smaller sums.

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In 2008, such small donors helped sweep Obama into the White House, but pundits remain skeptical whether the president would be able to energize them this time around, with his popularity undermined by a long slog to U.S. economic recovery.

Republican candidates, unlike uncontested Obama, are caught up in a heated primary season, splitting the small donors among them.

The campaign of the Republican front-runner Mitt Romney in 2011 raised only 9 percent of its total funds, or $5.2 million, from donors who gave less than $200, FEC filings show. The average listed donation was between $900 and $1,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the Reuters analysis.

In the last three months of the year, Obama received four times as many donations as did Romney. The numbers included repeat contributions from the same people.

"This has the potential to be a strategic advantage for Obama," said David Magleby, political scientist at Brigham Young University in Utah and campaign spending expert. "That kind of involvement conveys a more substantial psychological investment ... They have a sense of ownership of the campaign."

KEEPING THEM ACTIVE

On April 4, 2011, the first day of the official launch of the campaign, the Obama 2012 team sent its first email to supporters, asking for donations. Their grassroots effort four years ago went down in political history books as the most organized digital attempt at rounding up supporters, and they are preparing to repeat it.

The Internet spawns a large chunk of small donors thanks to easy and quick access. A growing amount of the campaigning has been done online, targeting voters on Facebook and Twitter, and through Google, Youtube and online Hulu television ads.

Of some 300 people in Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters, the digital team is the largest, said one campaign official working there. The team includes video and graphics producers, advertising strategists and members interacting directly with voters. They work quietly on the margins, but their work has never stopped since the victory in November 2008.

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