Charts: Wall Street Blows All Other Political Donors Away

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http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/01/wall-street-campaign-spending

Wall Street's outsized political influence is no secret, but some new data shows just how much it's ballooned. According to the Sunlight Foundation, campaign spending by elite Wall Street donors has jumped 700 percent in the past two decades, far outpacing individual donations from all other industries.

Sunlight found that donors who give more than $10,000 to candidates, parties, and outside spending groups—the "political one percent of the one percent"—account for 25 percent of total individual contributions. Among those elite donors who work in the finance, insurance, and real estate sector, contributions have risen from $15.4 million in 1990 to $178.2 million in 2010. (Not surprisingly, a significant chunk of 2012's biggest super-PAC donors are current or former Wall Street execs.)

During the 2008 election cycle, when the finance sector accounted for nearly 30 percent of all US business profits, its top donors gave $328 million, outspending their closest competitors—lawyers—by more than $200 million.

***charts at link