PolitiFact partnered with NBC News to determine that Hillary Clinton's recent claim that her campaign is mostly dependent on donors who donate less than $100 was mostly false.
"Now, we need you to keep working, keep volunteering, keep contributing at HillaryClinton.com," Clinton said. "Please, please join the 950,000 supporters who have already contributed, most less than $100, because our campaign depends on small donations for the majority of our support. We can't do this without you, so if you have been waiting for the right moment, now's the time to come join us."
Campaigns, under Federal Election Commission rules, must disclose a donor's personal information such as name, occupation, employer, and zip code if the donation is $200 or more. The donation could be one lump sum or a series of donation that total out to be at least $200. If a contribution is less than $200 a campaign is not required to disclose the donor's name.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) often touts that his campaign is largely funded by a small-donor base. The campaign says that the average donation is $27.16. Seventy percent of the donations are taken in from individuals.
Over the same amount of time, Clinton had raised close to $22 million, but only 17 percent of that was from small donors. With the release of the donations on February 29, Clinton's percentage of small donors rose slightly to 19 percent. Still significantly less than Sanders.
Politifact and NBC News reported that if Clinton wants to continue to tout that her pool of small donors that she needs to find new statistics. Politifact reported that if a candidate defines a majority of their support as dollars than Clinton is wrong. PolitiFact reported that 17 percent is not a majority.
The Campaign Finance Institute calculated that a majority of Clinton's raised funds through Jan. 31 have come from individuals giving the legal maximum of $2,700.
PolitiFact rated Clinton's statement that her campaign depends on small donations as a majority of her support as mostly false.
PolitiFact's justification was that Clinton's statement could not be independently verifiable and that 17 percent only accounts for the dollar amount that her campaign has collected through Jan. 31.