A Stanford University professor who analyzed more than 300 million political donations says elderly Americans have become disproportionately important targets for aggressive Democratic fundraising operations that bombard potential donors with texts and emails designed to keep the money flowing.
The research comes from Adam Bonica, a Stanford political science professor who combined Federal Election Commission contribution records with age information from voter registration data.
His findings paint an unusual picture of modern small-dollar political fundraising.
According to Bonica, people donating in response to what he classifies as Democratic fundraising spam are overwhelmingly older, while a relatively concentrated group of repeat donors supplies a substantial portion of the money.
Bonica calls some of them “captive spam donors.”
“Who is behind this flood?” Bonica wrote. “A thriving industry of digital-fundraising consultants who specialize in offering spam as a service, and the political action committees and candidates who adopt their methods. Together, they form a broader network of fundraising that deploys these methods at scale.”
The subject drew the attention of investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer and his podcast co-host Eric Eggers, who discussed Bonica’s research this week.
“What’s interesting about this piece is that they spam them on their phones and on email, and the numbers are quite shocking,” Schweizer said.
He pointed to an earlier CNN investigation involving a family that discovered its 93-year-old father was receiving a flood of Democratic fundraising requests.
Eggers highlighted another case from Bonica’s research.
“You’ve got this 85-year-old guy from Oxford, Ohio, who made 7,800 donations worth nearly $650,000 to Democratic causes — which, by the way, is more than double what his house is worth,” Eggers said.
Seven thousand eight hundred donations from one elderly donor is not the traditional picture of political fundraising.
Bonica’s research suggests it is part of a system in which repeated solicitations can produce extraordinarily frequent contributions from older donors.
Schweizer said he has received political fundraising messages himself and recognized the pressure tactics.
“I get these texts from time to time to raise money for political candidates, and they do try to manipulate you,” he said.
He recalled receiving one asking, “Why are you ignoring us?”
“And I’m like, ‘Because I don’t want to give to you!’” Schweizer said.
His concern was what the same language could do to a considerably more vulnerable recipient.
“But if you’re 93 and you’re mentally impaired or emotionally fragile, you’re going to feel guilty and you’re going to be goaded into making these donations,” Schweizer said.
Bonica’s research is not exclusively an indictment of Democratic political fundraising.
He wrote that Republicans pioneered versions of the strategy several election cycles ago. According to his analysis, however, the GOP has since largely “hollowed out” that donor base. Republicans received less from small- and medium-sized donors during the 2024 presidential election year than they had during the 2022 midterms.
Bonica argues that Democratic-aligned operations have now adopted the model on a remarkable scale.
He found that Democratic “spam PACs,” as he categorizes them, continued expanding even after ActBlue announced measures intended to stop deceptive fundraising.
ActBlue’s crackdown followed reporting and criticism of practices such as impersonating political candidates and advertising matching donations that could not be verified. The platform explicitly prohibited those tactics.
But Bonica says the money going to PACs fitting his spam criteria continued increasing.
“Yet, in the four months after ActBlue’s crackdown, donations to spam PACs were up by 33 percent from the same period in 2023, the most recent comparable non-election year,” he wrote.
“Elderly donors are still being squeezed.”
Bonica said 58 new Democratic PACs meeting his criteria for spam behavior began fundraising after the 2024 election.
His most striking comparison concerned their collective haul.
“In 2025 alone, Democratic-aligned spam PACs raised more from individual donors than all Democratic Senate candidates combined,” Bonica wrote.
Eggers also discussed the changing donor demographics surrounding House Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
According to figures Eggers attributed to the study, Jeffries had one of the youngest donor pools among House Democrats in 2018. His average donor was 54, while just 21 percent were at least 65.
Eggers said the picture has since changed dramatically.
“In this election cycle, his average donor age is 73 and the donor base of the senior citizens (65+) is now 86 percent,” he said.
Bonica’s work has also generated a separate controversy over attempts to publish it.
According to Bonica’s account, a version of his investigation underwent months of fact-checking and legal review at The New York Times but was ultimately not published. He says lawyers representing organizations discussed in his work, including Progressive Turnout Project and Mothership Strategies, objected to his reporting.
The Bulwark also considered the material and sought substantial revisions following legal objections, according to the account provided. Bonica ultimately published his findings himself on Substack.
The Nation subsequently examined the controversy surrounding efforts to scrutinize Democratic fundraising practices.
Schweizer said he was particularly surprised that the Times did not publish Bonica’s work.
“It’s shocking to me that The New York Times did not want to run this piece,” he said.
Schweizer went further and offered his own explanation, accusing the newspaper of protecting political forces opposed to Trump. That is Schweizer’s characterization of the Times’ editorial decision, not an established explanation for why the article was not published.
