Last year, 20 percent of all contributions to political candidates came from just 32,000 donors. That means, as the Washington Post points out, that one of every five dollars spent to elect politicians in this country came from 1 percent of 1 percent of the entire U.S. population.
The Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation have been tracking this "One Percent of the One Percent" spending, On Thursday, they published their analysis of the last three campaign cycles. These ultra-wealthy donors are mostly men who live in big cities (New York, San Francisco, D.C. and Houston, in particular.) They "often work in finance," write the report's authors. "Slightly more of them skew Republican than Democratic ... And a minute cluster of three individuals contributed more than $10 million apiece.
"The most jarring difference" from 2010 to 2014 is how 'top heavy' the donor list has become," they continue. "A small subgroup of these elite donors is the driving force behind its growing share of political money."
