Last month, ActBlue, an online fundraising platform for the Democratic party gave the FEC an unprecedented amount of data on small donors during the 2019-2020 election cycle. This includes millions of donations to candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Bernie Sanders, who relies heavily on small donors and who recently reported surpassing 1 million individual donors, dominates the donor count in the data with 27% of the overall total.
Along with their donation, donors are asked to report their employer and occupation. Coding the reported job titles according to the Standard Occupational Classification system reveals the relationship between occupation and candidate support among donors to 2020 primary candidates.
Of the 22 major occupation groups in the SOC system, Sanders leads the donor count in all of them except legal occupations, where both Warren and Buttigieg have more support. Sanders is most popular (56%) among donors in food preparation and serving occupations, which includes restaurant and fast food workers.
Plotting all of the occupations by the median wage of workers and the percentage of donors who support a candidate further demonstrates that Sanders' lead in the donor count is largely attributed to support among low-wage occupations. The other top-tier candidates tend to get higher support in occupations with higher wages.
A similar story emerges in a plot of candidate support by the educational attainment of workers. Sanders tends to excel among occupations where fewer workers have bachelor's degrees, while the reverse is true for Buttigieg, Warren, and Harris.
Here are the top 6 occupations for each candidate, limited to occupations with at least 100 donors.
Curious about a specific occupation? Search the job title below to find out who donors in the ActBlue dataset support.
Note: Code and methodology available here.
