Thread by @ShaneGoldmacher

NEWS: The dirty little secret of online fund-raising has long been that deceptive tactics grab cash from unsuspecting seniors.

My dive into how campaigns ensnare older people — including how more $$$ was refunded to 80 year+ donors than those under 50.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

This is the story of William W. Vaughan Jr.

But also the story of countless other grandparents and aging parents... nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

The reporting for this story began when reporting earlier this year on the Trump operation's prechecked recurring donation box scheme (nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/…) — when almost everyone I interviewed who felt tricked was elderly.

I wondered why…
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

Age, it turns out, is not on FEC filings. But occupation is.

WinRed had 56% of its in contributions come from people who marked "retired."

But I wanted more granular data so @Political_Data helped match refunds for ActBlue and WinRed to CA voter file...
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

The findings:

"More than four times as much money was refunded to donors who are 70 and older than to adults under the age of 50 — for both Republicans and Democrats."

Also: The older the refunded donor, the larger the amount refund tended to be.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

It's important to note that the age distribution was basically the same for Ds and Rs — but the percentage of online refunds for Republicans was more than triple that of Democrats nationally.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

One thing I heard from brain scientists and digital operatives alike was that deceptive digital tactics were likelier to trick older people — and everyone knows it.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

“You leverage data, technology, emotion and digital tactics to take advantage of a population,” said Cyrus Krohn, who oversaw digital strategy at the RNC more than a decade ago and now regrets some of his earlier work. “It’s like a kid in a candy store.”
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

David Laibson, a behavioral economics professor at Harvard who has studied the impact of aging on financial decision-making, said 1/2 of people in their 80s+ have dementia or some cognitive impairment short of dementia.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

One digital trick I learned about from family of a recurring donation victim — who is young but with a developmental disability — is hiding the unsubscribe link in plain text.

Here is the current RNC disclaimer. Every other link blue/bold/underlined.
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

Some of the interesting findings related to the Democratic digital firm Mothership.

When I looked at which committees had the oldest average age for refunded donors, all top 10 were Mothership clients.

*This is above a threshold of $75k in refunds
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

The avg. age for refunded contributions ranged from 74-78 for those committees. Groups included:

Stop Republicans
End Citizens United
Progressive Turnout Project
Nat'l Dem Training Cmte

Also: HMP, CBC PAC, CHC Bold PAC, Equality PAC, Elect Dem Women PAC
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

For comparison, the average age for refunded contributions for Biden was ~64.

Some others for reference: Bernie Sanders (~54.5), Warren (57.5), DNC (70.4)

The youngest refunder donors were from Andrew Yang's 2020 run (47.9).
nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…

Thank you for reading this thread — please read the full story for more!

And if you or your family or friends want to connect on your experiences online, my email is listed in my bio nytimes.com/2021/06/26/us/…