Thread by @propublica

Yesterday was #FECFilingDay, the deadline for reports covering fundraising & spending between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2019.

How presidential campaigns raise & spend their money sheds light on their strategies — and we found a few interesting things. Here they are:

2/ Take a look at the small-dollar donor %s: A number of candidates — including @ewarren, @realDonaldTrump, @PeteButtigieg — get about half of their money or more in donations of less than $200, a sign of grassroots support.

(Fundraising totals here: projects.propublica.org/itemizer/presi….)

@ewarren @realDonaldTrump @PeteButtigieg 3/ Trump's gets 47% of its money from small-dollar donors, but that’s not the whole picture, since he raises money w/ the national party through 2 other committees:

- Trump MAGA propub.li/2IUU8VW

- Trump Victory propub.li/33M3bkn, which raise more small-dollar money

4/ Let’s look at expenditures in Q3: @realDonaldTrump's campaign spent $2m on lawyers, and $1.8m on payroll, both records for the campaign. More than $1.6m went to online ads.

Big legal bills can take away from spending to reach voters... propub.li/35HiE6Y

@realDonaldTrump 5/ More money usually means a bigger staff. @BernieSanders spent $4.8 million on salaries in Q3, while @PeteButtigieg spent $3.5 million. Buttigieg also spent $4.6 million on digital ads, including more than $3 million on FB.
projects.propublica.org/itemizer/filin…

6/ The campaign of @ewarren spent more than $5.2 million on salaries in Q3 & millions more on Google & Facebook ads. The @JoeBiden
campaign spent $4.5 million on salaries while @KamalaHarris campaign spent $2.7 million on staff. 6/9

projects.propublica.org/itemizer/filin…

@ewarren @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris 7/ The @TulsiGabbard campaign spent money in Q3 on radio & billboard ads, plus $118,000 on a campaign RV. Campaigns that have raised less money generally have lower salary costs. @marwilliamson's payroll costs were $247,000, for example. 7/9

projects.propublica.org/itemizer/filin…

@ewarren @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris @TulsiGabbard @marwilliamson 8/ At @ProPublica, we created a database to track FEC filings, called FEC Itemizer. You can browse contributions and expenditures there.

***One note:*** the campaigns of @AndrewYang & @TomSteyer filed two seemingly identical copies of their Q3 reports.

projects.propublica.org/itemizer/presi…

@ewarren @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris @TulsiGabbard @marwilliamson @AndrewYang @TomSteyer 9/ That’s pretty unusual. Want to help us out?

Look through FEC Itemizer to follow the money yourself.

See anything? Flag it for us by emailing [e-mail] or responding here. And let us know if you have questions.
projects.propublica.org/itemizer/