I co-wrote a series of posts for the OpenSecrets blog about the demographics of 2014’s top 500 campaign donors. No surprises here: the biggest donors are old, white, and male. Some of my favorite findings:

– The average Republican mega-donor was 66.7 years old in 2014…but the average Democratic mega-donor wasn’t exactly youthful at 64.1. – Women accounted for just 8.2% of the money donated by the top 500, people of color less than 1%. – There are probably not more than 12 people of color among the top 500, only one of whom is Black and one Hispanic. – My back-of-the-envelope calculation based on surnames: Hispanics made around 2% of all campaign contributions in 2014.

I’d love to replicate this research with help from someone who knows more about name classification and/or matching with other datasets.