I suspect there’s not much in this story that will surprise you.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign raised nearly twice as much money in the greater Houston area than that of President Barack Obama – most of it from wealthier upscale communities – but more people overall contributed to the president’s re-election, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of campaign contributions.
Though Romney’s numbers are hardly surprising in a Republican-dominated state, the money trail reflects both the political diversity of the Houston region and the two candidates’ eclectic support in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
Nearly 6,000 people donated $3.6 million to Obama from April 2011 through August of this year, compared with Romney’s nearly 5,260 contributors who gave $6.6 million. Across the state, a total of $20 million in individual contributions went to Romney’s campaign, about $6 million more than Obama received, the analysis shows.
“Obama draws from a middle- and lower-middle class base of voters who make frequent and smaller contributions,” said Robert Stein, a political science professor at Rice University. “Romney’s contributions come from a wealthier base who make fewer but larger contributions.”
That’s pretty much the story nationwide, with the Obama campaign raising more money. I probably wouldn’t have bothered to link to this story at all, but I had to note this fascinating bit of sentence construction:
In Houston, individual donors gave Obama on average $607 and Romney on average $1,260. The geographic trend reflects distributions of strict party voting and in Obama’s case, race, experts say.
In other words, contributors to the Obama campaign include people who are not white. Because race is only something we note when we are not talking about white people. Or something like that. If anyone would like to explain to me why this sentence would have been any less appropriate or accurate without the words “in Obama’s case”, I’m all ears.