shareUpdate: CORRECTION: U.S. Senate donations
Date: 05/08/2012
The Virginia Public Access sent out erroneous information last week about the U.S. Senate candidates' reliance on out-of-state donors.
Democrat Tim Kaine has received 38 percent of his donations from individuals who live outside Virginia. Last week, VPAP erroneously put the figure at "more than half" of Kaine's money coming from out-of-state.
The error was caused by VPAP's incomplete understanding of federal campaign finance data it receives from the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.
VPAP has posted corrected pie charts showing the breakdown of donations for Kaine and Republican George Allen. (See below for a complete description of how donations are characterized.)
During its 15-year history, VPAP has established a reputation for providing information about money in politics that is timely and an accurate reflection of the official public record. In this case, VPAP did not live up to its own high standards. I apologize for this error.
David Poole
Executive Director
Virginia Public Access Project
Federal Campaign Donations are broken down into the follow categories
Virginia Donors is the total amount of contributions $200 or more from individuals with a Virginia mailing address.
Out-of-State Donors is the total amount of contributions $200 or more from individuals with a non-Virginia mailing address. Small Donors is the total amount of money from individuals who given to the campaign in amounts less than $200. It should be a safe assumption that for most candidates the majority of small donors are from Virginia. However, the available electronic data makes it impossible to classify these donors as in-state or out-of-state. “Small Donors” consists of the amount from two sets of donors:
- Unitemized donors - Individuals who have contributed less than $200 to a candidate in a given cycle and whose names the candidate does not have to disclose
- Small itemized donors - Individuals whose names and addresses are listed in a candidate’s disclosure reports, but whose names and addresses are redacted by the Federal Elections Commission in the data available for public download.
PACs is the total amount reported from political action committees.
Self-Financing is the total amount donated from the candidate.
Other is the total of transfers from other committees, loans, refunded/rebated expenses and bank interest and dividends.