Obama, Romney Top 5 Funders

d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net

17 points·akg··10 comments

Can someone explain what exactly "US Government" in the #1 spot for Obama means? Seems odd that government money could be used to support a candidate incumbent or not.

The list is badly labeled. What it should be labeled is "employers of people who donate money to the candidates".

I'm flagging the submission, because although this kind of information is interesting, this is a very crappy presentation of it. For an example of a better presentation: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/index.php

You can read about it here: http://www.fec.gov/pages/brochures/pubfund.shtml

I believe the money in question comes from the organizations' employees, owners, and PACs not from the organizations directly.

Funny, in the rest of the world, this would be normal -> parties get funding from the government, no funding from private entities allowed.

People employed by the US government.

Why do 3/5 in Romney list appear in Obama's list on what is supposedly the source for this data? http://maplight.org/us-congress/legislator/635-barack-obama

Top five seems a little short sighted, I would rather see "Funders over X dollars". It would provide more insight into the candidates corporate (or otherwise) sponsors.

For those who are interested here is the link to the source of this image: http://www.rootstrikers.org/who_are_you_really_voting_for

And before this starts playing into recent popular narratives, 4 years ago the bankers were Obama's top donors. It's also important to remember that these are donations from employees of these firms and not the firms themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com