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Capital Recap: More Big Money Flows Into Props for Auto Insurance, Payroll Contributions, GMO Labeling, and Munger's Tax

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It was a big week for ballot measures, with major new contributions flowing into the campaigns for or against several of the more popular (or hated) props.

Here's a recap, complete with charts showing both the number of contributions and the combined total amount received by supporters and opponents each day since the start of the campaign season. We'll be sure to keep cutting the numbers to bring you new ways of looking at the flow of money heading into the November election.

The numbers come from a series of Google spreadsheets we compiled based on data from the Secretary of State's office.

Prop 32: Ban on political contributions by payroll deduction

Wednesday saw the second biggest single-day cash infusion to the contest over Prop 32, which would end the automatic payroll contribution many unions rely on for political fundraising. The California Teachers Association gave nearly $7 million to the opposition in a single transaction. The chart below shows the trend line for contributions -- blue for combined total dollar amount from Yes and No campaigns, red for the number of transactions that day.

Prop 33: Auto insurance rates based on driver history

George Joseph, the man behind the measure that would allow you to port your "continuous coverage" discount from carrier to carrier, threw down another $195,000 on Tuesday. To date, he has supported the measure almost single-handed, giving $8.4 million of his own money. Following are the trend lines for Prop 33. The chart dips below $0 because of a negative value (likely a refund) of $10,000 on Dec. 22, 2011.

Prop 37: Labeling genetically engineered foods

The food-labeling prop has been extremely popular by at least two measures. For one, posts related to Prop 37 have been our most popular to date at Ballot Brief. At the same time, Prop 37 has received more individual donations than any other measure on the November ballot except for the proposed repeal of the death penalty repeal, Prop 34. Of course, many of the contributions in support have come from individuals and small donors. In August, the opposition campaign kicked into high gear, and their total receipts quickly dwarfed the supporters. On Tuesday alone, opponents of Prop 37 picked up nearly $2 million from major food companies including General Mills, Dole, Del Monte, Campbell Soup, Bumble Bee Foods, Sara Lee, Godiva Chocolatier, Kraft, and Land O'Lakes, among others. Here are the trend lines (again, the Y-axis dips below $0 because of small negative line item -- this time just $100 on June 30, 2012).

Prop 38: Molly Munger's Tax for Education

Prop 38 is another measure whose campaign is bankrolled by its proponent. Wealthy civil rights attorney Molly Munger has given nearly $20 million of her own money in a bid to pass her own tax measure to fund education, which competes almost directly with one supported by Gov. Jerry Brown. Munger dropped another $1.2 million into the campaign coffers on Tuesday. Here's what the trend lines look like for Prop 38:

Keep checking back for more updates as we dig deeper into the data.

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