How Donations Depict Donors
Dean's Backers Differ the Most From Bush's, Model Shows
washingtonpost.com
By Thomas B. Edsall and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, January 17, 2004; Page A07
They are young. They propel urban gentrification. They shop at Banana Republic, read Vanity Fair, like Audi A4s and watch reruns of "Friends." The $54,117 median family income of these well-educated, Internet-savvy professionals is relatively low in part because so many are single and live alone.
The people who meet these criteria tend to live in Zip codes that Claritas Inc., the demographics research firm, has classified as the nation's "Bohemian Mix."
They stand out in one other respect: They contribute to the presidential campaign of former Vermont governor Howard Dean (D).
Another strong Dean donor group is made up of what Claritas has called "Up and Comers" -- upwardly mobile, college-educated young singles who are heavy Internet users, shop at Ann Taylor and watch MTV.
The pattern of contributions to Dean shows how he has been able to tap into one of the fastest growing Democratic constituencies: well-educated, socially liberal and relatively affluent voters.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) has, in turn, successfully mined two other similar constituencies: what Claritas has called "Young Digerati" -- listen to National Public Radio, drive Saabs, live in condos on the edge of cities -- and "Money and Brains" -- support arts charities, shop at Nordstrom, married with few if any children, many with postgraduate degrees.
For Democratic candidates and the Democratic Party, these donors have become increasingly important, as business groups have shifted toward the GOP and the parties are now prohibited from collecting large contributions of unregulated "soft money."
In the upscale suburbs, there is another constituency with a median household income of $92,163. Its members drive a disproportionate number of Porsches and like scuba diving. They rank number one in the percentage of business owners, and are close to that in the proportion of corporate executives.
They are in the "Movers and Shakers" Zip codes, according to the Claritas model. These neighborhoods have proven to be a gold mine for the Bush-Cheney '04 reelection committee.
The Washington Post compiled a list of the Zip codes providing the most campaign contributions to each presidential candidate. Claritas then put the Zip codes into its classification system, providing a window into the type of donors drawn to President Bush, Dean, Kerry, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). The number of contributions was too small to provide a reliable analysis for each of the other candidates, including retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who had been in the race only two weeks at the end of the most recent reporting period.
Although donors are wealthier than the voting public as a whole, the Claritas categories help distinguish between the young, intellectual Dean supporters and the wealthy executives who give to Bush.
As a reflection of the growing Democratic strength in the old-line, established suburbs surrounding such cities as Boston, New York and Philadelphia, Kerry and Lieberman each received a higher proportion of contributions than Bush did from sections dubbed "Blue Blood Estates" and "Upper Crust," neighborhoods with the most wealth of all the Claritas classifications.
The residents of these communities drive Lexus ES300 sedans or Acura SUVs, read Fortune and Architectural Digest, and live in million-dollar homes.
While Bush did well in the "Blue Blood Estates" and "Upper Crust," the type of community where he stands apart from all the Democratic candidates has been named "Winner's Circle" by Claritas.
The youngest of the wealthy suburban Zip code classifications, Winner's Circle neighborhoods are dominated by "25- to 34-year-old couples with large families in new-money subdivisions." They ski, read Parents magazine, watch the Cartoon Network and drive Chrysler Town & Country minivans.
Bush received a disproportionately high percentage of his contributions from these folks, while all the Democrats fared relatively poorly.
Gephardt, who is running as the candidate of the traditional New Deal Coalition, stood apart from most of his Democratic colleagues by doing particularly well at fundraising in less affluent sections with much older voters.
Two of Gephardt's best types of neighborhoods are "Urban Elders," with a median household income of $25,866, and "New Empty Nests," with a household income of $66,200. The "empty nest" folks drive Buicks, are members of fraternal organizations and read Smithsonian; the "urban elders" have a harder time making ends meet, watch daytime television and own Dodge Neons.
The pro-Gephardt neighborhoods were strikingly weak in their support for Dean, in a demonstration of how Dean has done well among the new Democratic elite of well-educated professionals, while Gephardt has performed better among working-class constituencies.
Edwards -- who has raised much of his money from trial lawyers, many of them in southern states -- differed sharply from the other major Democrats.
Edwards's support base was most heavily concentrated in communities that Claritas has called "Executive Suites," "Brite Lites, Li'l City" and "City Start-ups." These encompass upper-middle-class singles who live just outside the beltway, read GQ and watch "Will and Grace"; well-off middle-class couples who live in satellite cities, eat at Bennigan's and read boating magazines; and young, college-educated whites living in downtown, relatively poor neighborhoods, who read Rolling Stone and drive Kia Spectras.
In a statistical analysis that determined how similar or dissimilar the fundraising base of each candidate was to the other candidates', Dean's donor base was found to be the most different from Bush's.
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