President Joe Biden’s primary fundraising arms have received an outsized amount of support from the most expensive zip codes in the country, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
The 10 most expensive zip codes by median home value, which accounted for just 0.02% of the population in 2020, were responsible for 7.6% of this year’s donations to the Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund, which are the primary committees used by the president’s reelection effort, according to data from the United States Census Bureau and the FEC. The roughly 81,000 people living in those zip codes donated 311 times more to Biden than would be proportionate to their share of the population.
The residents of America’s 10 most expensive zip codes donated a total of $7,519,474 to the Biden campaign and the Biden Victory Fund this year, or roughly $930 per person, according to FEC and Census Bureau records.
Median home prices in these zip codes range from $4.25 million in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on the low end, and up to $7.95 million in Atherton, California, on the high end, according to the Times. The median price of a house in the United States was $412,000 as of September, according to Forbes.
Democrats have been bleeding working-class voters since 2016, though have made up their losses by appealing to higher-income voters and college graduates, according to Axios.
Working-class congressional districts have begun electing more Republicans to represent them, while Democrats have started picking up wealthier districts, Axios reported. Democrats represented nine of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts as of 2022.
Biden has portrayed himself as a champion for the working class, leaning into his purported blue-collar roots and juxtaposing himself with former President Donald Trump.
“I view this as a campaign between Scranton and Park Avenue,” Biden said during a CNN town hall leading up to the 2020 election.
“All that President Trump could see from Park Avenue is Wall Street. All he thinks about is the stock market,” he continued. “How many of you all own stock in Scranton? Not a whole lot of people own stock.”
Biden campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg said the president raised more than $15 million during a weekend of fundraising earlier this month in wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods that was focused on courting high-dollar donors and members of Hollywood’s social elite, Deadline reported.
“The elites, media and establishment want Joe Biden to win reelection,” DeSantis campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin told the DCNF. “Ron DeSantis is the American people’s champion against the elite, and that’s why we are working so hard to win this nomination.”
Jeremy Mayer, a professor of government at George Mason University, told the DCNF that “it is not all unusual for a politician to derive a large percentage of his money from small wealthy areas.”
“The specific ten most expensive zip codes are in very blue areas, and donate accordingly,” he said. “You’d probably see a different picture if you looked at the 100 wealthiest zip codes.”
He also pointed out that high-dollar donors give more money to super PACs than they do campaigns, as it allows them to “make more of a difference.”
Trump did not enjoy nearly as much support from these wealthy zip codes as Biden did, according to FEC records.
The Trump campaign and the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, the former president’s two primary fundraising arms, only raised $204,993 from those zip codes, or about 0.4% of his total contributions this year, according to the FEC.
“Trump is probably doing better with small donors to his campaign than Biden is,” Mayer told the DCNF. “Trump ignites powerful passions in a way that Biden just doesn’t.”
Biden’s support from wealthy counties becomes more disproportionate when examining just a handful of zip codes that have become bastions of Democratic fundraising.
Just 10 select wealthy zip codes were responsible for 11.7% of donations to Biden’s reelection effort this year.
These zip codes spanned wealthy Californian communities like Beverly Hills, Atherton, Los Altos, Manhattan Beach, Santa Monica, San Francisco and Palo Alto. They also included zip codes in New York City and Chevy Chase, Maryland.
The Trump and Biden campaigns did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
Robert Schmad on December 18, 2023
