Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Pharma Money Continues to Pour Into Obama's Coffers

The pharmaceutical industry's PAC money continues to favor Obama over McCain! The chart below compares donations as of July 28, 2008 with those as of September 2, 2008. Pharma PAC contributions to Obama grew by 6.1% during this period, whereas contributions to McCain grew by 4.6%. Obama has now received just about 2X more pharma PAC money as has McCain!

What does it all mean? Is Obama better for pharma? What do YOU think? Who do you intend to vote for?

If you haven't given me your opinion on Obama vs. McCain yet, please take 2 minutes to respond to the survey, which you can find here. If you have already taken the survey and wish to change your response (especially if you were undecided before and have now made up your mind who to vote for), you can go back and change your response as long as you are using the same computer and have not deleted cookies.

As always, you can remain anonymous or you can identify yourself if you wish to be quoted in a Pharma Marketing News article I plan to write for the October, 2008 issue. I keep all comments confidential and, if I quote someone, I always let them review it before publication.


SOURCE: OpenSecrets.org

METHODOLOGY: The totals on these charts are calculated from PAC contributions and contributions from individuals giving more than $200, as reported to the Federal Election Commission. Individual contributions are generally categorized based on the donor's occupation/employer, although individuals may be classified instead as ideological donors if they've given more than $200 to an ideological PAC.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous7:06 AM

    As any conscientious journalist would know - Sen. Obama's campaign does NOT accept PAC money - these are contributions from INDIVIDUALS in the pharmaceutical industry, not PACs - and your "methodology" does not make that at all clear.

    Fortunately, in America, individuals can still make choices that are not associated with any benefit for the industry they happen to work in.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for pointing this out.

    At the federal level, the primary source of campaign funds is individuals; political action committees are a distant second.

    I'm just reporting it as presented by OpenSecrets.org, which also has a category for individual contributions by people working in the industry.

    You should also mention that the McCain campaign benefits from PAC and individual money contributed to the Republican Governors Association. This gets around hard money limits imposed by accepting public funding.

    P.S. I am not a "conscientious journalist." I am a blogger with a personal opinion. I do, however, try to give my readers multiple links to my sources of information.

    ReplyDelete

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