Few Contributed, but at MU and Uk, most gave to Democrats

During the 2008 presidential election, people who identified their employer as Marshall University or the University of Kentucky gave a large majority of donations to Democratic candidates over Republican candidates according to campaign contribution information obtained from Fundrace on huffingtonpost.com.

Approximately 97 percent of donations from MU employees and 78.7 percent of donations from the UK employees went to Democratic candidates.

Ten MU employees donated a total of $4,791 and 75 UK employees donated a total of $52,902 in the 2008 presidential election.

George Davis, Marshall University political science professor, said even though there was too little information to draw any overwhelming conclusion from the donation patterns, it did not surprise him that the university employees were more likely to support Democratic candidates.

“People working in higher education are more likely to be more educated, more affluent and because of that among the most politically involved,” Davis said. “What is surprising is that only 10 employees from Marshall and 75 from Kentucky contributed to candidates.”

President Barrack Obama received the most financial contributions from employees at both universities, with 52 percent of the total from UK and 62 percent of the total from MU.

This is a greater percentage than he received in total. Obama totaled approximately 42 percent, or $659.7 million, of the total $1.54 billion in monetary contributions raised by the top 18 fund raising presidential candidates according to the campaign finance election guide on nytimes.com.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came in second in financial contributions at both universities with 16.6 percent of the total contributions from UK and 21.7 percent at MU.

Sen. John McCain came in a close third in donations from university employees at UK with 15.7 percent of the total donations, but did not received any donations from MU employees.

2008 presidential election financial contributions from Marshall University and University of Kentucky employees by candidate

Democrats	Marshall University	University of Kentucky
Obama	$2,948	$27,774
Clinton	$1,043	$8,786
Edwards	$1,000	$4,055
Kucinich	$0	$1,000
Total	$4,491	$41,615
Republicans
McCain	$0	$8,321
Paul	$300	$2,716
Guililani	$0	$250
Total	$300	$11,287