BO did work very hard for the money, especially considering he was an incumbent president. I remember hearing some things about how this was the first time an i

BO did work very hard for the money, especially considering he was an incumbent president. I remember hearing some things about how this was the first time an incumbent president was outraised by his opponent. Incumbents have a staggering advantage in US politics. Looking forward to seeing how the final fundraising figures come out. (Google is not yielding immediate results for this question yet.) On the tech side, the Obama campaign was pure genius. For example, they figured out that $7 was the sweet spot when they sent an email to my friend asking for money. And of course it was a seamless, one-click give, technologically perfect with no friction involved. He would just think "ok" and click the give button. He was flabbergasted on election day when they sent him a receipt saying he had given $399 over the course of the campaign. And yes, it is normal for individuals and corporations to give more individually to Republicans. The economic case is more direct. If electing a Republican will lower your tax bill (or prevent it from rising) by $100 million dollars, then giving $1 million dollars can make a lot of business sense. It's much harder to make the case that investing in things like education and healthcare will result in much larger economic growth for the country overall, and thus produce bigger gains for all in the long term. (Full disclosure: I think this is true.)