Yoga teachers, rabbis, and firefighters love Obama. Homemakers, farmers, and entrepreneurs love Romney. That’s according to the latest filings from the Federal Election Commission, which lists contributions to the candidates from individual donors in the election cycle so far. The Daily Beast combed the data to get a sense of the partisan leanings of hundreds of different professions.
Our findings support what is widely known: Obama’s been trying to attract small donations from a wide swath of supporters, while Romney’s concentrated on relatively larger donations from a smaller pool of people. Obama’s camp now counts more than 1.25 million donations from individuals, with an average donation of $210; Romney’s now up to 248,000 donations from individuals, with an average donation of $670. Romney’s tactic appears to be working—Republicans currently have $62 million more in cash than Obama and the Democrats.
To see the split from a job perspective, we analyzed the numbers to figure out which candidate raised the most from a particular group of workers, then ranked some of the most interesting results by the total funds donated to both candidates. The occupational groupings are based on how donors described themselves, so some categories include several occupational descriptions to include the variations that exist for a single job (example: for lawyers, we included attorneys as well as the donors who specified a type of lawyer).