Political contributions: What the numbers say

Source: Elections Canada (data), graph (David McKie)

Elections Canada made minor news last week after releasing this year's first quarter results for party financing.

But the more interesting story lies behind numbers dating back to 2004, the year Jean Chrétien's Liberal government reduced the donation limit for individuals, corporations and unions to $5000.

Since that time, the numbers have fluctuated wildly for all the major parties.

For instance, donations for the Conservatives, Liberals and NDP dropped dramatically from 2006 to 2007, with the Liberals experiencing the steepest decline.

It could be that donors were still recovering from the 2006 election.Or perhaps Liberal supporters, who had been looking forward to years in power, were too shocked to consider giving more money.

Laval University political scientist, Louis Massicotte says these are fair assertions, but he says the problem goes deeper than that.

I had Massicotte and other political scientists review the party financing numbers that I downloaded from the Elections Canada website and analyzed with the help of Excel, one of my favourite reporting tools.

Massicotte says that voters are fed up with federal politics that they feel may not necessarily relate to their everyday lives. He says the numbers may represent the "disgust" many voters feel for federal politicians.

And he echoes the assertion by former Chief Electoral Officer Jean Pierre Kingsley that the inability of political parties to raise money has become a  "permanent" problem.

University of Calgary political scientist, Lisa Young, says the numbers show that the Conservatives are still on top, and the Liberals are struggling, but getting a little better.

Young agrees that "everyone is just a little bit disgusted with everyone over partisan infighting," which means that the problems raising money may continue.

But  "the odds are good that it will go back up as we get closer to a probable election," she predicts.

For Young, the real problem is the lack of research when it comes to party financing.
She says that, for some reason, academics seem to be ignoring this topic. So it's difficult to get a true sense of what motivates people to open their wallets. 

In general, Young says that people donate when they are stirred to do so, which may be one of the reasons why parties try to use controversial issues such as abortion to raise money. She says conventional wisdom also dictates that people feel more compelled to give when they sense the threat of an election. So, for instance, the Liberals saw their donations peak in the summer of 2009 around the time when Michael Ignatieff said that he could no longer support Stephen Harper's government.

"Getting a sense of what's behind the patterns is going to be a game in speculation," says Young. "Since 2004 when the law changed, we've had such exceptional political circumstances that the only thing you can say with real certainty is that the conservatives are better at raising money from individuals than other parties. That much is clear."

Indeed, the numbers seem to support her analysis.

Since 2004, the Conservatives have just about double the number of donors compared the Liberals and the NDP, although for the last two years the two opposition parties have been attracting donors at a faster rate.

"I mean the trends are pretty clear. The Conservatives are on top. The Liberals really struggled. They're getting a bit better at it," says Young, adding that the struggles have continued since the Conservatives changed the election rule in 2007 with the Accountability Act.

That legislation means Corporations and unions can no longer donate - at all.

Individuals are limited to $1000.

Young and Massicotte say the changes play into the Conservatives hands because that party is better at raising money from individual donors than the Liberals and NDP who depended on corporations and unions, respectively.

Once again, the numbers seem to support some of this analysis.

From 2008-2009, the NDP was the only political formation of the five mainstream parties to increase the number of donors and contributions.

The Bloc Québécois hasn't been a huge part of the discussion, and there's a reason for that say Massicotte and Young.

Apart from limiting its base to Quebec, the Bloc doesn't seem to place as much emphasis as its rivals on fundraising.

Massicotte says there are three key reasons for this: since the party only campaigns in Quebec, the pressure is off to raise as much money as the others for expenses such as travelling; the Bloc's potential to attract donations is also limited because it is loathe to compete with the provincial Parti Québécois for precious dollars; and the Bloc knows that it can depend on the subsidies to parties that kicked in with the 2004 political financing changes.

For instance, from 2007 to 2009, the Block received $4.2-million in subsidies.

Indeed, the numbers tell many potential stories, but we may have to wait until academics decide to study political financing the way they do in the United States.

"Political financing in Canada is fairly new," says John Enright of Elections Canada.
"It only started in the early 70s. And where we are now in terms of political financing, in terms of the reporting, it's huge."

Huge because at least now we have numbers to crunch that could give us clues about party financing as we gear up for yet another election.