Since the early 1970s—not coincidentally, shortly after the 1965 Voting Rights Act began to dramatically increase the voting participation of African Americans—the donor class in America has grown more powerful and more secretive, but the number of donors who give contributions large enough to require tracking (above $200) is minuscule, less than 1.2 percent of the entire adult population. Their outsize donations totaled more than 71 percent of all campaign contributions during the 2018 election cycle.
