2008 Presidential Election campaign fundraising in the Huntington, Ashland and Ironton area

A large fundraising base is often regarded as an advantage when it comes to winning a political campaign, but numbers for 2008 Presidential Election fundraising in the Tri-State area shows that is not always the case.

According to FundRace at The Huffington Post, citizens in the cities of Huntington, Ashland and Ironton gave a total of $287,863 to the political campaigns combined.  In these three cities, 63 percent of all the funds raised were for the Republican Party.  The only city that raised more funds for the Democrats than the Republicans was Huntington, which barely edged out the competition.

Within the city of Huntington, $170,080 was contributed to the 2008 presidential election.  Out of an estimated population of 49,185 in 2008, only 208 residents made a contribution.  According to CNN, West Virginia voters selected John McCain with 56 percent of the votes, which totaled 397,466.  This is off pace with the contributions made to the candidates within Huntington.  The Democratic Party received $86,755 in campaign funding in Huntington, which would make one question whether raising the money was worth the time.

For the most part, financing a political campaign is of the utmost importance to anyone who is running for office. It is very important for any political candidate to know his or her resources and constituency.  Knowing a constituency and really connecting to them gives any political candidate an advantage when it comes to fundraising.  As fundraising becomes more and more prevalent it becomes imperative that one knows how to use their resources and how to organize and use the money.

In Ironton, Ohio the results were much like that of Huntington.  The political contributions didn’t quite match up with how the rest of the state decided to vote.  The big difference between Huntington and Ironton was the amount of contributions.  People living within Ironton donated only $6,854 to the campaign.  While the state of Ohio ended up voting Democratic, when the numbers are broken down the people in the Ironton area were more supportive of the Republican party with 63 percent of the funding going to them.

Unlike the contributions in Ironton and Huntington, the fundraising in Ashland is right on track with how the citizens of Kentucky voted in the presidential election.  Republican candidate John McCain easily won the vote in Kentucky by a margin of 17 percent with 1,048,462 of the votes going to him.  Within the city of Ashland, there was a total contribution of $110,929 to the 2008 presidential campaign with $93,279 going to the Republican Party.  This means that 84 percent of all funds raised in the city of Ashland went to the republicans.

In the three cities that were researched, another strange occurrence came up.  In Huntington, Ashland and Ironton the top contributor always donated money to the party on the losing end of the campaign fundraising totals.  Huntington is a good example of this.  As was stated before, the Democratic Party had the highest number of contributions with $86,755 going to the campaign.  The top contributor in the city of Huntington gave $5,250 to the republican campaign with the closest democratic contributor donating only $2,300.