Ron Paul, most contributed-to-by-military-personnel candidate?

Someone has gone and collected some numbers (or, rather, has finished the job started here and, before that, here).

Caveat: I know not who ‘Largo’ is, nor what Phreadom is all about (but they have a Friends of Ron Paul thing in their sidebar). The data is collected from here, hence verifiable (I assume). It turns out Ron Paul is the candidate who has collected the most financial contributions from military personnel (across all branches; presently serving and retired.) I’ll pass along the totals, going just far enough down the list to give us our major players:

[ok, my nice little table was dramatically messing up the page. Why? I don’t know. It was dead simple html. Oh well.]

Ron Paul (24,965)
Barack Obama (22,866)
John McCain (17,425)
Hillary Clinton (10,550)
Bill Richardson (5,325)
Mitt Romney (3,851)
John Edwards (2,504)
Rudy Giuliani (2,320)

There are curiosities if you consult the full chart (see that first link). Clinton does badly among those presently serving (she didn’t get a dime from anyone serving in the Army, although the Navy seems to like her ok.) She ekes out a 4th overall because she is 1st in contributions from veterans. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that.

Also, apparently there is some concern the Obama figure is inflated (with his total counting income from sales of mugs, t-shirts and such, whereas other campaigns don’t count that. Would I know whether that is true or not? I would not.)

These numbers are low, in absolute terms. I take it to be obvious they might not mean much. (Someone else want to quantify the insufficiency of the data set?) Still, it is suggestive. On the assumption that 2008 is shaping up to Giuliani-Romney/Clinton-Obama primary match-ups, the Dems look ok, the Reps quite pitiful. (Throw in Fred Thompson and John Edwards and the picture doesn’t change.) Romney and Giuliani together get just over half of Clinton’s total, who gets half of Obama’s. So: only 6% of military contributions are going to ‘serious’ Republican candidates, whereas 35% are going to ‘serious’ Dem candidates. (OK, I should throw Edwards in at this point, boosting the Dems to 38%, because Edwards still has, at this point, a real shot, unlike McCain or Paul.)

It makes sense that members of the military would be focused on the war, as a campaign issue. I guess what we are seeing, among Republicans, is intense polarization – pro- and anti-war, with McCain and Paul as beneficiaries of those who will only reach into their wallets for those who are strongest in these directions (Ron Paul is obviously going to sweep the anti-war Republican table, cash-wise). [And now Josh Marshall writes, re: the debate: “The discussion of Iraq was the case in point. Only two guys on the stage had anything remotely coherent to say on the subject – McCain and Paul.”] But it doesn’t look as though the Republican party will be the party of McCain or Paul. Where does this leave Giuliani and Romney, elbowing each other, looking to look tougher and stronger?

UPDATE: one commenter at Phreadom points out that Ron Paul seems to be unusually good at collecting employment data from contributors, thereby artificially boosting his standing in this match-up. Another points out that the data may be a bit of a mess. I also trust it is clear that I mean ‘serious candidate’ only in the horse-race sense of ‘might actually win’. There are, I grant, other forms of seriousness.