Campaign finance is a small world. Through the first year of this election cycle, just 0.16% of American adults made campaign contributions of $200 or more, but that select group accounts for 63.9% of all contributions to federal candidates, PACs, and party committees. Consequently, the same donor names show up again and again on FEC reports.

Why so much overlap? First, the number of Americans with the resources to write the four-figure checks that sustain campaigns is relatively small, and only a fraction of those care enough about politics (whether for ideological or financial reasons) to make campaign contributions. And once a donor writes the first check, he or she (usually he) will stay on fundraising professionals’ prospect lists forever, which ensures several friendly calls from candidates each cycle. Lastly, when politicians team up to form a joint fundraising committee, they are guaranteed to have donors in common by definition.

That said, some pairs of candidates have more donors in common than others.

Candidates with the most donors in common, cycle-to-date



Not surprisingly, the top donor-sharers tend to be politicians with joint fundraising committees. This cycle’s leaders, John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell, have more in common than being members of the GOP leadership with primary challengers; they belong to at least three JFCs together, including the McConnell Cornyn Leadership Victory Committee. Other candidates on this list are mostly from the same chamber, the same state, or even (in the case of the Udalls) the same family.

Odd as it may seem, some candidates from opposite parties share donors, too.





Opposite-party candidates with donors in common, 2014 cycle-to-date

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Some of these pairs make sense ideologically, like Stephen Lynch and Gabriel Gomez, both of whom were more conservative alternatives (in the primary and general elections respectively) to now-Senator Ed Markey. Others, like Cory Booker and Mitch McConnell, are miles apart on the left-right spectrum but share more important bonds, such as the affections of major donors from the financial and legal industries. Still others are members of the leadership and receive contributions from heavy hitters who may want to make sure that their interests are protected no matter which party controls Congress next year. Dick Durbin and John Cornyn, for example, received contributions from dozens of the same Lockheed Martin employees.

Both of the lists above are dominated by fundraising powerhouses, mostly in the Senate, since these are the candidates who have the most donors. A more diverse batch turns up when we look at opposite-party candidates with the largest percentage of their donors in common.

Opposite party candidates with largest percentage of their donors in common,

2014 cycle-to-date



This list includes some politicians who share territory, like Alaska’s Don Young and Mark Begich, who both received contributions from employees of local powerhouses like Chugach Alaska Corporation. Topping the list, though, are Rep. Sam Graves and Sen. Mary Landrieu, who hail from different states but chair the small business committees in their respective chambers, and so were favored with contributions from several of the same lending firms.

As small as the universe of political donors is, it may be about to shrink even further thanks to the Supreme Court’s recent McCutcheon decision removing the overall limit on how much any individual donor can give candidates, PACs and parties. If so, expect to see more odd pairings in cycles to come as a small pool of very wealthy donors give to an unlimited number of candidates and joint fundraising committees become increasingly prevalent.

(A caveat: CRP relies on FEC data to attempt to assign unique identifiers to individual donors. This is complicated by the fact that different campaigns may refer to donors by different nicknames, place them at different addresses, or make typos, so donor matching is never perfect. As a result, the figures above are probably underestimates.)

Image: Former Newark mayor, now senator, Cory Booker, is a Democrat, but shares donors with several Republicans. (Flickr/ Tris Hussey



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