Aided by user-friendly online tools, small donors have upped their campaign giving. Why aren't they having more of an impact on the Presidential primaries?Rogers Cadenhead wants to have an impact on this year's Presidential election. So he's heeded online appeals for contributions, making $25 to $40 donations to candidates including Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.), former Senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), and Representative Ron Paul (R-Tex.). "The allure of one-click participation in democracy was too hard to resist," says Cadenhead, a 40-year-old computer book author and the publisher of the liberal-leaning political blog the Drudge Retort. "I'm not the kind of person who gets called for real donations."
Cadenhead and millions of individuals like him are nonetheless being courted by the candidates. Presidential hopefuls are grabbing their attention—and contributions—with donation requests embedded in blogs, e-mails, social networks, YouTube (GOOG) videos, and their own Web sites. This year's candidates have received more donations under $200 than any prior group of Presidential hopefuls, says Steve Weissman, associate director for policy of the Campaign Finance Institute (CFI), a nonpartisan research organization associated with George Washington University.
Large Donors Still Dominate
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