Obama 2008 donors not a generous this time around...

[Conservative]

Obama's 2008 Donors Don't Give In 2012

Donors who gave $200 to Barack Obama in 2008 but have not yet in 2012, by location. The darkness of the dot corresponds to the number of drop-off donors in that zip code. (BuzzFeed/Ky Harlin)

In 2008, more than 550,000 gave more than $200 to Barack Obama, entering their names in the longest list of individual donors ever seen in American politics.

That list was a snapshot of the hope Obama inspired in a cross sections of liberals, young professionals, African-Americans, and Democrats who saw in him a generational and historic moment. But now, as Obama struggles to keep pace with his 2008 fundraising clip, that list offers a cross-section of Democratic disappointment and alienation. According to a BuzzFeed analysis of campaign finance data, 88% of the people who gave $200 or more in 2008 — 537,806 people — have not yet given that sum this year. And this drop-off isn’t simply an artifact of timing. A full 87% of the people who gave $200 — the sum that triggers an itemized report to the Federal Elections Commission — through April of 2008, 182,078 people, had not contributed by the end of last month.

Interviews with dozens of those drop-off donors reveal the stories of Democrats who still plan to pull the lever for the president, but whose support has gone from fervent to lukewarm, or whose economic circumstances have left them without money to spare.

“Where’s the change I can believe in?” asked Lisa Pike, a 55-year-old from Williamsburg, Va. with a small medical transcription business who gave $658 in 2008. She said she is not planning on contributing this time around. “I wish he was the socialist they accused him of being. I wish we had the tons of change that would justify the right freaking out. I wish him well — I don’t dislike him personally — but I’m disappointed that he’s not the change-agent I had hoped for.”

“I’m looking around here for leadership, and it didn’t happen,” said Elizabeth Hollins. She and her husband Danforth have retired to Williamsburg, Va., and together contributed $2,450 to Obama in 2008. Hollins used to consider herself to be a diehard Obama supporter, but this year, she said, she is not as convicted in her backing.

“I didn’t feel good that what I expected wasn’t done,” said Prashant Kothari, 65, an anesthesiologist from Tiffin, Ohio who gave $500 in 2008. “The promises during the campaign didn’t materialize.”

The missing donors appear, in their raw numbers and in interviews, to be a living illustration of the enthusiasm gap. It should not, however, be mistaken for some sort of mass defection of the Democratic base...