THIS TIME: IS ANOTHER MEASURE OF A CANDIDATE’S WORTH, THE NUMBER OF SUPPORTERS?

We got a nudge from someone who said you should not equate money raised with the number of supporters. Maybe, maybe not. But, the relative number of supporters might mean something.

If so, Josh Harder has a significant lead over Jeff Denham based on figures for this year and for the entire election cycle back to 1-1-2017.

We have tried to figure out the number of  individual DONORS. Publicly reported figures come from the official filings made to the Federal Elections Commissions. There are two issues regarding the use of those numbers, but the issues apply to both candidates.

First: The FEC data does not require the candidates to include those whose donations do not total less than $200, individually or in the aggregate. Those numbers may be known to the candidates but, cannot be independently verified.

Second: We wanted to find how many individual contributors there might be, so we needed to avoid duplications. That is, several contributions by the same supporter. We screened by unique last name.

This did have the effect of making contributions from a husband and wife with the same last name, for example, appear as one supporter. And, contributions from family members with the same last name also appeared as one individual. Also, all those Smiths and Jones were lumped together as one donor.

SO, REMEMBER: THESE ARE “ABOUT” NUMBERS AND, IF ANYTHING, THEY ARE AN UNDER-COUNT.

But, they are what they are and here they are (as of 6-30-2018):

Mr. Denham has received contributions from 917 unique last name donors for the entire election cycle. About 578 of those have come within the last six months.

Mr. Harder has received contributions from 1,703 unique last name donors for the entire election cycle. About 1,144 of those have come within the last six months.

We filtered out corporations and PACs from the overall number of contributors. Mr. Denham has 949 donors in that category and Mr. Harder only 28.

As we reported earlier, Mr. Denham leads in total money received for the election cycle so far. He has received  a little over $3,000,000 while Mr. Harder has received about $2,500,000.

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