Gerrymandering Dollars
Democratic money isn't going to the most important districts, hampering Democratic chances
The top political conversation these days concerns Republican gerrymandering, the practice of jamming all Democratic supporters into deep blue districts where their votes don’t matter. But Democrats are also hurting their chances of winning the House in the midterms by doing something similar: sending hundreds of millions of dollars to candidates and PACs in safe districts instead of to the candidates in tough races who can beat Republicans.
Let’s call this practice “donormandering.”
Democrats must fight gerrymandering. But to win, they also need to fight donormandering by being smarter about sending donations to candidates in competitive races.
For example, let’s look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s in a solidly blue seat and had the most unique contributors of any congressional candidate, with 736,389 individuals giving to her campaign. Let’s keep in mind that she won her race in 2024 by nearly 40 points. Now let’s look at Christina Bohannan, who is running in IA-01 in a toss-up race against serial underperformer Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Just 1,662 individuals have given to her campaign, which is less than 1% of the number of donors to AOC.
The real kicker? Bohannan lost by just 798 votes in 2024. If just a few dozen of the hundreds of thousands of AOC donors had given to Bohannan instead, we’d likely be talking about how Bohannan flipped a seat in 2024 and how Democrats would have another seat in Congress. Instead, small donors continue to give to AOC not because she needs it, but because she espouses policies that attract and excite people even if they have no chance of being enacted. What they don’t see, or don’t care to see, is that if Bohannan and other swing district Democrats don’t win their races then AOC won’t be able to pass any of her key priorities.
Using data compiled by fundraising consultant Tim Tagaris, we analyzed the top 50 sources of Democratic small dollar money. We categorized the money in three ways: money going to the party organs (DCCC, DSCC, DNC), money going to competitive districts and states (Jon Ossoff, Mark Kelly) and money going to uncompetitive districts (like AOC), and PACs (many of which are “Scam PACs” that spend most of their money on consulting fees).
The results were concerning. The top 50 recipients of ActBlue donations raised a total of $261 million. Of that, only $26 million (10%) went to competitive districts and states. Competitive district candidates raised half as much as safe district candidates ($55 million). And Scam PACs, defined as PACs tied to the Mothership Vortex, raised $37 million, or 14% of the total ActBlue fundraising.
According to the recent Congressional Competitiveness Index by the Welcome Democracy Institute, the cost to fully compete in all Republican held districts that should be winnable would be at least $41 million. That means safe district candidates could give swing seat Democrats $41 million and still have $14 million to… keep their deep-blue seats blue.
More small dollar donor money went to PACs than to competitive races. The unfortunate reality is that what works for online fundraising doesn’t win races. And if small donors want to see their vision for the world enacted, it starts with taking back the House in 2026. And in order to do that, they need to back the Democrats like Rebecca Cooke and Janelle Stelson who can flip the seats necessary to get to 218, and give to frontline members like Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who will need to defend their seats, unlike AOC, who we already know will win next year.