Hillary Clinton Just Achieved Another Big First

Her campaign is fueled by unprecedented support from female donors.

Kyodo/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Women just don’t donate as much money to political campaigns as men do—until now. Traditionally, women have always made up a smaller percentage of donors to American political campaigns and have given less than their male counterparts. In recent years, the divide between men and women on political giving has narrowed a bit, at least on the Democratic side. In 2012, for example, Barack Obama received 44.1 percent of his donations from women, while Romney picked up just 28 percent of his war chest from female donors. (That counts only donations over $200, since   info for smaller contributions isn’t reported). Whether it’s her status as the first female major party nominee or her campaign’s special emphasis on courting female donors, Hillary Clinton has broken through. The majority of donations (over $200) to her campaign are from women contributors, who also kicked in a larger share of her campaign cash.

OpenSecrets.org, where I used to work, has the full breakdown of the numbers.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate