Hillary Clinton Just Achieved Another Big First

Her campaign is fueled by unprecedented support from female donors.

Kyodo/AP

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Women just don’t donate as much money to political campaigns as men do—until now. Traditionally, women have always made up a smaller percentage of donors to American political campaigns and have given less than their male counterparts. In recent years, the divide between men and women on political giving has narrowed a bit, at least on the Democratic side. In 2012, for example, Barack Obama received 44.1 percent of his donations from women, while Romney picked up just 28 percent of his war chest from female donors. (That counts only donations over $200, since   info for smaller contributions isn’t reported). Whether it’s her status as the first female major party nominee or her campaign’s special emphasis on courting female donors, Hillary Clinton has broken through. The majority of donations (over $200) to her campaign are from women contributors, who also kicked in a larger share of her campaign cash.

OpenSecrets.org, where I used to work, has the full breakdown of the numbers.

Source: OpenSecrets.org

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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