Online fund-raising for political campaigns has grown substantially in recent election cycles, raising new and important questions about how this phenomenon is affecting the composition of the donor pool. In this article, the authors use data from a survey of donors in the 2004 presidential election to compare the demographic, socioeconomic, and political characteristics of online and offline donors. The authors find mostly similarities between the two donor pools, although online donors tend to be younger and more politically active. The results also show that candidates on the left were more successful at motivating online contributions in 2004.
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