Real Housewives of Orange County brought once brought us catfights and drama. But Orange County, as well has housewives, are symbolic of something else: stalwart Republican support. Orange County usually leans Republican in National elections, bucking the trend in California. Republicans raised millions there in 2012.
But what about homemakers nationally?
Jeb Bush raised the most money among self-reported homemakers in the latest round of presidential campaign fundraising , according to Federal Election Commission reports for the third quarter (ending in October 2015). He raise over $1 million from that group alone.
The reports document campaigns’ “best efforts” to collect data on donors’ employers. However, many don’t have an employer, and list “homemaker,” “student,” or “retired.”
Curiously, Republicans raise millions upon millions of dollars from people who describe themselves as homemakers. To put this in perspective, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders brought in less than one hundred dollars from self-identified housewives (or househusbands). Because the "employer" response is self-identified, we can't say if that represents contributor's actual professions, or just how they want to be percieved.
There are other categories as well, all self-identified. Below, you can see how much candidates raised directly from people who described themselves as only as “retired,” or who didn’t list an employer or a category when the donated.
Ben Carson takes the cake for fundraising among retired folk, coming in around $2,700,000. He also raised the most from people who didn’t list a profession.
These comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt because the data are imperfect. Some candidates don’t have a category for “no profession listed” (in the case of Donald Trump, John Kasich, and Rand Paul, we’ve added other fun facts).
Federal Election Commission reports don’t include so-called “dark money,” Political Action Committees, and other outsider cash. There’s also little correlation between candidates’ fundraising and their current place in the polls.
Jeb Bush -- $13.38 million
Homemakers: 1,122,249.30
Retired: 1,733,880.14
No profession listed: 396,785.00
Ben Carson -- $20.2 million
Homemakers: 224,714.51
Retired: 2,755,440.21
No profession listed: 1,383,129.79
Carly Fiorina -- $6.8 million
Homemakers: 122,005.00
Retired: 1,023,666.91
No profession listed: 266,272.26
Chris Christie -- $4.2 million
Homemakers: 220,900.00
Retired: 194,246.00
No profession listed: 181,220.00
Ted Cruz -- $12.2 million
Homemakers: 376,669.50
Retired: 1,848,773.39
No profession listed: 778,763.72
Donald Trump -- $3.9 million
Homemakers: 10,011.25
Retired: 248,471.02
Amount raised from employees of Boch Automotive Group: 86,936.80
Amount raise from Donald J. Trump: $100,000
Huckabee -- $1.2 million
Homemakers: 41,957.00
No profession listed: 42,774.08
Retired: 133,769.50
Jindal -- $0.6 Million
Homemakers: 13,300.00
Retired: 1,350.00
No profession listed:500.0
Kasich -- $4.4 million
Homemakers: 226,171.37
Retired: 511,542.25
Money Raised In Ohio: 2,157,899.50
Marco Rubio -- $5.7 million
Homemakers: 290,576.60
Retired: 676,795.96
No profession listed: 826,491.65
Rand Paul
Homemakers: 2,017.72
Retired: 77,186.80
One person declared their employer as “NONE-RETIRED TRYING TO LIVE ON SS,” which is funny since Rand Paul once referred to Social Security as a “ponzi scheme” that people should be able to opt out of.
© 2024 Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.