The Cash Chase: Week-by-Week
by Ryan Sager
Thu, 19 Apr 2007 at 12:55 PM
updated Thu, 19 Apr 2007 at 1:00 PM
The Center for Responsive Politics has a neat little tool on its Web site that let's you look at the candidates' fundraising performance week-by-week. As in, who did well early? Who did well late? Who's kept up a consistent pace? Who's raised money in bursts?
Even more fun (yes, fun is relative, but this is political coverage and there's no sex scandal yet this week), you can compare the candidates against each other.
Now, how much does week-by-week performance matter? Of course there will be variations that are fairly random — say, Mitt Romney held a fundraiser in one particular week and Rudy Giuliani didn't — and, ultimately, we look at what candidates have in the bank at the end of the quarter...
Still, it does matter if one candidate can keep up a steady flow of cash week after week and another candidate can't. It does matter if one candidate got a late start and another candidate got an early start.
First, let's look at Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama. The most striking thing from this graph is actually that, despite Mr. Obama's having beaten Mrs. Clinton on first-quarter fundraising, Mrs. Clinton actually leads in the money shown here. That would presumably be because this graph doesn't include contributions below $200 (which aren't itemized, and thus can't be included). Since Mr. Obama got a full fifth of his money from such small donors, a significant portion of his cash isn't represented here:
Next, let's take a look at Mr. Romney vs. Mr. Giuliani:
What's important to note here is that Mr. Giuliani didn't even start competing with Mr. Romney until February — Mr. Romney had January all to himself. Once Mr. Giuliani did start competing, he made a big showing in February, and then he actually beat Mr. Romney three weeks out of four in the March pre-cut-off rush. That's pretty significant when looking ahead to who could make a big showing in the second quarter (April-June).
To look at one last head-to-head, here's Mr. Obama versus John Edwards:
As you can see, whereas Mr. Edwards led early on, Mr. Obama surpassed him in mid-February and then proceeded to beat him like a drum through the end of the quarter — by several million dollars in each of the last two weeks of March.
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