Money Talks? (updated)

The democrats have tried to spin the Scott Walker recall election in a number of different ways.  Many of GorT's liberal friends on Facebook like to point out that the Republicans outspent the Democrats in some skewed proportion - some claim as high as 7-to-1.  Let's step back a take a broader look at campaign contributions.  The folks at OpenSecrets.org compile much of the freely available data and publish it in different forms and Mike Cornelison put together a piece highlighting the issue.  However, I always am skeptical of numbers thrown about, so I did a once over on them and made some adjustments.  These adjustments are purely addressing any partial support for democrats vs. republicans.  So the numbers below represent the amount of money donated since 1989 with the percentage (as reported via OpenSecrets) towards a political party taken into account.

Organization (Open Secrets rank)		Total To Dem	Total to Rep
3 American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees		44,369,104.96	482,272.88
5 National Education Assn		30,682,853.84	2,073,165.80
7 Service Employees International Union		29,139,860.25	777,062.94
9 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers		34,094,136.00	710,294.50
10 American Federation of Teachers		29,629,429.92	0.00
11 Laborers Union		28,693,591.80	2,308,679.80
12 Teamsters Union		28,470,121.86	1,636,213.90
13 Carpenters & Joiners Union		27,214,622.60	3,164,491.00
14 Communications Workers of America		29,007,394.84	0.00
16 United Food & Commercial Workers Union		26,255,811.15	0.00
18 United Auto Workers		27,518,823.36	0.00
20 Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union		27,077,622.46	276,302.27
29 National Assn of Letter Carriers		19,624,308.88	2,153,887.56
32 AFL-CIO		18,520,412.50	892,550.00
40 Sheet Metal Workers Union		18,895,994.00	397,810.40
42 International Assn of Fire Fighters		15,272,628.54	3,328,649.81
44 Plumbers & Pipefitters Union		18,099,154.08	778,458.24
45 Operating Engineers Union		15,927,764.16	2,654,627.36
52 Air Line Pilots Assn		14,427,597.01	2,607,397.05
57 United Transportation Union		13,555,924.80	1,694,490.60
58 Ironworkers Union		14,073,676.08	917,848.44
59 United Steelworkers		15,128,829.54	0.00
66 American Postal Workers Union		13,648,006.85	430,989.69
69 National Air Traffic Controllers Assn		9,980,717.76	2,633,800.52
77 Koch Industries		1,160,999.91	11,609,999.10
86 Natl Active & Retired Fed Employees Assn		8,876,945.00	2,536,270.00
Totals		559,346,332.15	44,065,261.86

I did leave out the Club for Growth on the Republican side, but even then, it would only add $13M to the Republican total which would change the ratio of 12:1 spending since 1989 to 10:1.  If we were to apply an estimate that 40% of union workers would support Republican candidates (as Mike Cornelison points out), that narrows the margin to $335M towards democrats for all the listed organizations and $267M towards republicans.  So, maybe keep these numbers in mind the next time a liberal friend of yours spouts off about spending in elections insinuating that it is the GOP that benefits.