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

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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