This post has been updated to include a statement from the Clinton campaign.

Not that you saw it or anything, but OpenSecrets.org got a pretty big shout-out over the weekend. When presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants to get her facts about campaign finance straight, at least she knows where to come.

“I think it’s important to point out that about 3 percent of my donations come from people in the finance and investment world,” Clinton said during Saturday’s Democratic debate. “You can go to OpenSecrets.org and check that. I have more donations from students and teachers than I do from people associated with Wall Street.”

Well, alright, Madam Secretary — we’ll go to OpenSecrets and check that. Spoiler: Clinton is technically right, but there are some important caveats. Like super PACs. But we’ll get to that.

First, let’s look at her campaign contributions. For what Clinton is trying to show, she’ll want a numerator that includes how much she has received from the securities and investment industry plus the commercial banking industry — combined, that’s what most people think of as “Wall Street,” and in her case, it comes to just about $2.5 million. Her denominator should be her total amount of individual contributions from people who gave more than $200 plus her PAC receipts, which adds up to $63.4 million.

What she should not do — but apparently did — is simply divide her contributions from the securities and investment industry by her campaign’s total haul. For one thing, the total includes many contributions from donors of $200 or less — what are known as “unitemized” donors in the language of campaign finance because campaigns don’t have to list their names, employers or anything else about them. That’s $13 million in Clinton’s case that could have come from any number of investment bankers or college professors, or farmers, mechanics and professional clowns, for that matter — we can’t code what we don’t know. In addition, the total raised can include loans, self-financing, party transfers and/or investment income. None of those are significant in Clinton’s case, but they are for some other candidates.

Clinton appears to have used our data to arrive at the following (bad) equation: $2 million in itemized Wall Street contributions to her campaign, divided by $77.5 million in total receipts, equals less than three percent.

Correct equation? Let’s try $2.5 million (securities and investment plus commercial banking) divided by $63.4 million (large individual donors plus PACs), which comes to 3.9 percent.

Super PACs blow up the math

Now let’s blow up those numbers, because Clinton’s math is based on her campaign’s receipts and don’t include contributions to the super PAC supporting her (and nobody else but her).

The vast majority of candidates from both parties vying for the presidency are shored up in part by at least one super PAC, which can accept unlimited funds. Now, it’s true that such groups can’t legally coordinate expenditures with campaigns. Clinton can’t direct how the main super PAC backing her, Priorities USA Action, uses the millions in donations it collects. In other words, it’s not really her money to spend.

But Clinton’s statement ignores how dominant super PACs have become in the campaign finance picture. And donors in the securities and investment and commercial banking industries have given the super PACs backing Clinton more than $3.5 million out of the $20.3 million they’ve raised overall from individuals, unions and other entities — a healthy 17.2 percent. Virtually all of that $3.5 million came from the securities and investment industry rather than commercial banks, putting Wall Street at second place on Clinton’s list of top industry donors to her super PACs.

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Bottom line: Taking into account donations to both outside groups and the Clinton campaign itself, Wall Street has provided about 7.2 percent of the funds backing Clinton — more than double what she said on Saturday.

The competition

Still, Wall Street is considerably more important to some of Clinton’s rivals in terms of fundraising. The securities and investment industry places among the top three industry donors for three presidential candidates in terms of contributions to their campaigns alone. Jeb Bush has raised $1.9 million from the industry, Marco Rubio raised just over $514,000 and Fiorina raised just under $145,000.

Right to Rise USA, the Jeb Bush-backing super PAC, raised $26.8 million from the securities and investment industry — about 26 percent of the group’s’ total. Super PACs backing other candidates don’t come close to that total figure.

Bush’s total of $33 million from Wall Street is 26 percent of his super PAC plus large individual and PAC donations to his campaign — compared to 7.2 percent for Clinton.

Super PACs — all of them — have raised more than $71 million from Wall Street donors, with almost $70 million of that coming from securities and investment, this cycle. That’s nearly 23 percent of all super PAC contributions.

On Clinton’s side of the aisle, Bernie Sanders disavows super PACs and has received $47,187 from the securities and investment industry.

As for Clinton’s statement that she has more donations from students and teachers than from Wall Street, that came from Clinton’s internal campaign data — again, information on small donors isn’t made public so we don’t know how many there are. The education industry — mostly university faculty and administrators — does have an affinity for Clinton, as we’ve written previoiusly; it has given nearly $2 million to support her White House bid, almost all of which went to her campaign committee.

We generally don’t lump students into the education industry, since education is not their source of income; in fact, they are usually dependents, in which case we include them in the industry in which his or her parent works. However, we went back and looked at how much of Clinton’s total came from those who self-identified as “students”: $747,493. Those who said they were “teachers” have provided $518,495.

So, in short: Hillary Clinton, thank you for using OpenSecrets. Next time, just call us, maybe.

Update, Dec. 21: In a statement to OpenSecrets Blog, Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin provided a list of contribution totals from donors with education occupations. “When you look at the entirety of the donations to our campaign, an internal analysis shows that the comparison is about 3 percent or $2.3 million from people in finance and investment versus just over $3 million from students and teachers,” he said.



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