On the left, the open Internet and connection technologies have given anti-war and pro-civil liberties dissidents like writer Glenn Greenwald a standing and reach that, if we had a multi-party political system, would surely be rewarded with a healthy segment of the popular vote. And Occupy Wall Street, which was organized almost entirely outside the contours of “normal” American politics by anarchists inspired by the protest movements of Europe and the Arab Spring, was able to briefly upend the political debate and focus attention on inequality in America, a topic the two major parties uniformly ignore.

But the central contours of American politics really haven’t changed all that much in the ten years since the rise of “people-powered” campaigns, big e-groups like MoveOn, online fundraising hubs like ActBlue, blogs and social media. The political operating system of big money campaigns, gerrymandered districts, discriminatory ballot access rules favoring the major parties, largely undisclosed lobbying, and winner-takes-all first-past-the-post representation hasn’t been altered in the slightest. Consider these sobering facts:

· In 2004, the average cost of winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives was $1.26 million (in inflation-adjusted 2012 dollars), according to the Campaign Finance Institute. In 2012 it had risen to $1.6 million. On the Senate side, the average winning campaign cost $8.7 million in 2004; in 2012 that had risen to $10.4 million.^[1]

· If the Internet was democratizing electoral politics, then small donors would be stepping up and playing a bigger role in helping candidates clear these tougher thresholds. But on the whole they aren’t. In the 2004 cycle, just eight percent of the money given to House candidates came from donors giving less than $200. In 2012, that percentage had inched up to just ten percent. Big donors (those who give more than $1000) and PACs still mattered far more to House candidates, delivering a whopping 71% of all the money raised in 2012 (which was, in fact, more than in 2004).^[2] On the Senate side, the percentage of money going to candidates from donors giving less than $200 didn’t change at all: it was 17% in 2004 and 17% in 1012.^[3]

· Political challengers, whom one might expect would be the beneficiaries of any surge in participation by small donors, in fact have seen little overall benefit. In the 2004 cycle, House challengers raised 18% of their total funds from small donors. In 2012, that percentage had dropped to 14%. The total amount given by small donors had indeed increased, from $16 million to $25 million. But this was dwarfed by an even bigger increase in the role of larger donors. And on the Senate side, while small donations made up a larger percentage of the money flowing to challengers, again there was no real change in the magnitude between 2004, at the dawn of big online fundraising, and in 2012. Senate challengers raised 27% of their cash in small donations in 2004, and 26% in 2012.^[4]

· It’s true that the Internet has enabled the rise of a handful of new organizations that bundle contributions to political candidates, especially on the Democratic side of the aisle, and many of these donations are from small donors. In 2012, ActBlue, the biggest online aggregator of Democratic donations, bundled $30 million to House candidates and $18 million to Senate candidates, and slightly more than half of those amounts came from small donors.^[5] It’s also true that Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was able to match Wall Street (which supported her opponent Scott Brown) dollar for dollar with a huge national base of small donors. And self-activating groups of liberal activists working through large community blogs, most importantly DailyKos.com, have sometimes rallied themselves to recruit and raise early money for new candidates, not only in congressional races but sometimes even state legislative fights. But while promising, these are still exceptions to the rule.

· And while technology may be contributing to a modest increase in the number of people making small donations to support candidates or influence the political process, so far this hasn’t resulted in a marked change in the class make-up of the political donor pool. According to the 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Survey, analyzed by political scientists Kay Lehman Schlozman, Sidney Verba and Henry E. Brady, “those who make small donations are relatively unlikely to be drawn from the lower runs of the income ladder….online contributors who donate small amounts are not markedly less affluent than their offline counterparts.” They add, “If anything they are actually somewhat better off financially. Thus it seems that the Internet may be bringing in more small donors, but it is not bringing in a less affluent set of small donors.”^[6]

· Re-election rates for Congressional incumbents have also barely changed. Yes, in 2010 and 2012 somewhat more incumbents than usual lost their seats in House races—but, respectively, 85% and 90% were re-elected in those cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Re-election rates for Senators tend to fluctuate more, since there are fewer races and more competition, but in 2012, 91% of sitting Senators up for election were returned to office.^[7] The advantages of incumbency (gerrymandered districts, franking privileges, pork, greater media attention) are still quite real.

· Even more shocking, the lowered barrier to entry has not enticed more people to run for state office. In 2012, nearly 40% of all state legislative candidates ran for office unopposed by a candidate of the other major party, according to the invaluable Ballot Access News.^[8]

And for all the talk of “change you can believe in,” and the number of times the media reported that Barack Obama had organized a mass movement using the latest digital technology, and that he would enter office with an army of millions helping him bring real change to Washington, DC, very little changed.

[1] Campaign Finance Institute, “The Cost of Winning an Election, 1986-2012,” http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/vital/VitalStats_t1.pdf.

[2] Campaign Finance Institute, “House Receipts from Individuals, PACS, and Other, All General Election Candidates, 1999-2010,” http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/historical/Donors_HouseCand_2000-2010.pdf

[3] Michael Malbin, Campaign Finance Institute, personal communication to author, September 2, 2013.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Michael Malbin, “Small Donors: Incentives, Economies of Scale, and Effects,” The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, Volume 11, Issue No. 3 (October 2013).

[6] Schlozman, Kay Lehman, Sidney Verba and Henry E. Brady, The Unheavenly Chorus: Unequal Political Voice and the Broken Promise of American Democracy, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) p. 505.

[7] https://www.opensecrets.org/bigpicture/reelect.php

[8] Richard Winger, “Major Parties Fail to Nominate Candidates in Almost 40% of State Legislative Races,” Ballot Access News, October 25, 2012, http://www.ballot-access.org/2012/10/major-parties-fail-to-nominate-candidates-in-almost-40-of-state-legislative-races.

The New York Times, August 1st 2022

Forbes , November 9th 2014

Sifry’s Response: The Nation, October 21st 2014

Review: The Nation, October 17th 2014

Utne Reader, October 7th 2014

Salon, August 3rd 2014

AlterNet, June 18th 2014

PBS, June 10th 2014

South by Southwest, April 16th 2014