Here's something original from the Obama campaign, and it's smart too. Instead of showcasing the financial amount raised, they are showcasing the number of people that have contributed to the campaign. I went back to put the number in perspective, by comparing it with Dean's 2003 numbers. And in comparison with Dean's 1st quarter results, the number is absolutely astounding.

In 2003, Howard Dean's 1st quarter contributions came from more than 12,000 individual donors. Obama's at over 70,000 contributors. I don't think most people would see that as a realistic comparison though, as Dean's campaign was still a blip on the radar until March of '03, so I went and looked at Dean's second quarter of 2003. Dean had over 73,000 contributors, so roughly about the same as Obama, so we can use this for the sake of comparison.

I don't know what the average contribution of Barack Obama's campaign is for the first quarter. For Dean, those 73,000 contributors averaged about little less than $100 overall, for a total raised of $7.6M. Just "a tiny percentage" of the donors had maxed out. I think we'll see a much higher average donation for Obama among those 71,000+ contributors, probably around $300 per, for over $20M raised in the first quarter.

For Dean, a little less than half of all his contributions came through the internet in the first quarter of 2003, and that number stayed about constant throughout the year, with the average online contribution more or less around $70 dollars from the first quarter and onward, as well. It's hard to guess what Obama's numbers are, or if they will differ from Dean's in this regard.

Of course, Obama has done all this in the first quarter of 2007 and has 9 months of the year waiting out front of us. By July of 2003, the number of Dean contributors was at 80,000. Where did Dean wind up, in terms of the number of contributors in 2003? I don't recall (anyone know?? [CB thinks around 300,000]). I do recall in late 2003, when the campaign began to talk about a "$100 revolution" to compete with Bush in the general election, which 2 million Americans contributing. That was a bit getting ahead, as the campaign found out soon enough.

What Obama is doing with this metric that's smart is setting it up as a parallel process number to the total amount raised in the quarter. They know that Clinton is likely to raise a lot more money than Obama will, perhaps $40 Million? So even if Obama gets half that, he has the number of contributors to point toward as a people-powered marker in the process. I'll predict that Obama's numbers will not reflect, as a percentage, as strong of an internet-powered operation is as was Dean's campaign. That's because Obama's also got breadth across a wide spectrum in the Democratic party fundraising establishment that, either due to his own appeal, or those that don't want to back Clinton for the nomination, are backing Obama with maxed out donations. The internet is not central to Obama's fundraising candidacy, but it does provide a means for a wider number of people to embrace his campaign than those that do for any of the other candidates at this point.

Update [2007-3-29 13:49:7 by Jerome Armstrong]:
The Edwards campaign comes out with an email of their online ActBlue totals, but I don't think this includes all of the online Edwards contributions-- will need to look into it more.