Money, money, money

Atrios has some interesting news about campaign fundraising on the web. In amongst all the Presidential primaries, there's also a special Congressional election (the American equivalent of a by-election) taking place in Kentucky next week. The Democratic candidate, Ben Chandler has been advertising on blogs recently and has to managed to raise almost $50,000 through those ads for an outlay of just $2,000. I don't know much about fundraising, but a 25 to 1 return on investment seems pretty good to me.

Of course, this does show how much American elections cost - that $50,000 which could probably run 2 or 3 British by-elections is under 10% of the total amount of cash he's raised for the election - but it does show, as the Dean campaign demonstrated before, how the internet can be used very effectively for fundraising, raising large totals by small donations from lots of individual donors.

One other thing that interests me in it is the way people have been showing where their donations have been coming from - Atrios has asked his readers to add an extra 18 cents to their donations to show they come from Eschaton readers, and I've seen similar schemes on Kos and Pandagon for their readers to identify their donations, though with different amounts, obviously.

I'm wondering - could this be successful with fundraising for British elections? I suppose it needs someone to take the first step and try it.