Hillary Clinton campaign getting most ‘gay’ donations
A survey of US presidential campaign contributions from ‘gay’ areas
has revealed that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual voters are
making most of their donations to Senator Hillary Clinton.
The democratic frontrunners received the most support, Senator Clinton received 48% of contributions from postcodes with large LGBT populations.
Senator Barack Obama received 39% and former Senator John Edwards received just 13%.
The top three Republican frontrunners received a total of 24% of
contributions from the ‘gay’ postcodes, compared to 41% nationally,
while the Democrats took 76%, compared to 59% nationally.
The study, by New England newspaper Bay Windows, indirectly
gauged LGBT support by looking at campaign contributions to the
candidates from 33 postal codes around the US known to have large LGBT populations, such as West Hollywood, the Castro in San Francisco and Dupont Circle in Washington DC.
All contributions to US election campaigns must be registered with the Federal Election Commission, who then report where donations came from.
The gay newspaper Bay Windows chose postcodes spanning 20 cities in 12 states based on three criteria: the number and percentage of households with same-sex partners based on the 2000 census; neighbourhood rankings in a market study of gay and lesbian website membership by GayMarketExpress.com; and a survey of editors in major US cities.
Lisa Keen, of Bay Windows admitted the methods had some limitations:
“The FEC reports do not specify what contributions came from LGBT
donors, only how many dollars were contributed within a specific zip code (postcode).
“Second, while the zip code areas chosen encompass heavily gay
sections of the cities, they also contain areas which are not known to include large numbers of gays.”
Keen stressed that it was early in the campaign, but that the results seemed conclusive:
“While the debates and forums continue to give voters a chance to
scrutinise all candidates, the LGBT community nationally – like the
majority of Democrats – seems to have narrowed its choices down to
three.”
