MyDD has a long diary up about the analysis of the DNC finances.

[madfloridian]

In reality if I am reading this right, Howard Dean is doing just about what he said he would do....rebuilding with individual smaller donors. This is long piece, with charts and graphs. I will need to read more tomorrow.

But here are some of the pertinent parts:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/10/29/224250/62

"For example, in September of this year, the DNC received $5,655,303, of which $5,575,863 came from individuals, and $17,100 came from PACs and the ilk. Over the course of the year, receipts have been largely in the $5 million to $6 million range monthly, with the vast majority, also in the $5 million to $6 million range, coming from individual donations."

...."It appears that Dean runs the outfit on a pay-as-you-go basis; as the 'Receipts' and 'Spent' curves track each other pretty faithfully."

Also interesting is the analysis of how the Democracy Bond donors may be listed, because so many are smaller donors.

I had theorized that the Democracy-Bond holders would show up in the following manner: Assuming that most of them/us give less than $200 a month, we would fall in the "unitemized" bucket until our donations for the year totaled $200 or more, and then we would become "itemized". As the year wears on, both the number of "itemized" donors, and the ratio of "itemized" to "unitemized" donations, should both increase. I also expected the amount of "itemized" donor money to increase over the course of the year.

In addition, I predicted that the number of "itemized" donors would drop drastically between December 2005 and January 2006, as the "itemized" status of the small Democracy-Bond holders "reset" at the beginning of the new year. Then over the course of the new year, the number of "itemized" donors would increase as the Democracy-Bond holders' donation totals passed the $200 mark over time.

Well, it appears I was half-right. While the ratio of itemized to unitemized donor money stayed pretty much the same all year, there is indeed a definite "saw-tooth" in the graph of numbers of itemized donors between December 2005 and January 2006. Based on this I estimate that in January 2006, there were a hard core of about 6,945 Democracy-Bond holders who give less than $200 per month, with an unknown but much smaller number who give that amount or more per month. How many are there now? I will have to wait for the January 2007 saw-tooth to be able to make an estimate of that.

Complicated but interesting.

Edited for link.