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Bernie Sanders' powerful small-donor machine is back in business, Kamala Harris wins among the big donors, and Pete Buttigieg has emerged as a competitor.
The fundraisers for the first real quarter of the 2020 presidential campaign have arrived and show a race in which several candidates stood out from the pressure field of the Democrat – and others have used alternative strategies to complement the campaigns. fundraising fee. Elizabeth Warren, for example, transferred $ 10.4 million from her account to the Senate to her presidential campaign.
As for the presidential campaigns, money is not everything, as Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will tell you. But campaigns need money to advertise and pay the organizers. And in this long year before 2020, primary voting really begins, the political world uses fundraising totals alongside polls to assess the strength of the candidates. Here are some of the winners in the first quarter numbers.
Bernie Sanders has the highest and remains a small donor center
For 2019, the campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) began: it was a question of whether the fundraising base of small donors that fueled its rise when it was presented against Clinton in 2016 would remain enthusiastic now that Sanders was in a more crowded outbidding field.
Until now, it seems that the answer is yes. Sanders has reaped the maximum of all Democrats in the race so far, with $ 18.1 million. And 84% of this fundraising comes from small donations (that is, unit contributions of $ 200 or less).
In fact, Sanders' small donation of $ 15.2 million almost tripled that of any other Democrat. The former Texas representative, Beto O'Rourke, came behind him with $ 5.5 million (although he only took part in the race towards the end of the quarter).
It should be noted that this $ 18.1 million raised only slightly exceeds the $ 15 million that Sanders raised in its first quarter, after announcing its 2015 campaign – when it was comparatively less well-known – and well below what he had harvested in the following quarters. But it's pretty easy to put him above his rivals in the field of the 2020 Democrats.
Kamala Harris has combined a lot of money to become the largest fundraiser other than Bernie
The $ 12 million fundraising by Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) puts her in second place in the Democratic group behind Sanders. And currently, she is clearly the candidate with the strongest support among major donors. Harris collected $ 7.6 million in detailed contributions ($ 200 or more), nearly twice as many as any other Democratic candidate.
Not relying too heavily on the traditional fundraising model of "organizing glitzy events in which rich people maximize their contributions" could be politically risky for the Democratic Party today. But Harris managed to complete his big trip with donations of $ 4.4 million as well.
This figure is certainly not close to Sanders '$ 15.2 million, but it is competitive with all the others at the top of the Democrats' battlefield (O'Rourke raised $ 5.5 million from small donors Buttigieg raised $ 4.5 million, Warren raised $ 4.2 million and everyone else collected much less).
Pete Buttigieg made it clear that he was a suitor
A little over a month ago, the mayor of South Bend, in Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, was a stranger. But he clearly had the best first quarter of all the lesser-known Democratic candidates – rising to third place in several recent polls (from the top states and the country) and joining the squad of outstanding candidates behind Biden and Sanders.
This increase was also evident in his fundraising: Buttigieg's $ 7.1 million campaign in the first quarter put him in fourth place in Democratic fundraisers behind Sanders, Harris and O'Rourke. (Biden has not started fundraising yet). The Buttigieg campaign indicated that they had about 158,000 unique donors and that 64% of its fundraising activities were done through small donations.
In particular, the fact that Buttigieg's fundraising began late in the quarter (after a dazzling appearance in front of CNN's mayor's office in mid-March to present it to a national audience) could be a promising sign for the mayor of the fourth city of Indiana.
Joe Biden has not seen anyone accumulate an incredible financial advance
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has led most polls both at the national level and in the first primary states so far this year, has not yet started his campaign and started raising money himself. However, Biden's decision to be absent from the first quarter was a risk – if other candidates ignited during the fundraising, they could have accumulated a formidable monetary advantage that would make it quite difficult to catch up.
For example, in the first quarter of 2007, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama raised more than $ 25 million for their respective presidential campaigns. This time, no individual candidate has nearly reached this figure.
Sanders, the main source of funding, missed $ 18 million in contributions. After him, there are sharp declines towards Harris (12 million dollars) and the rest of the field (9 million dollars or less each). So it's clear there's room for Biden on the ground – although he still has some work to do, because Sanders, for example, has $ 15 million in cash. What is not yet clear is Biden's performance, both in fundraising and the biggest campaign, if he participates in the race.
Elizabeth Warren had saved money for a rainy day – and she needed it
The conventional wisdom is that the first quarter of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) (in which she said that she was giving up any fundraising activity of considerable value) was disappointing given the previously high expectations for his candidacy and reported big problems for his campaign. She spent the maximum of all Democrats ($ 5.2 million) and she did not collect much more than that in the form of new contributions ($ 6 million). Campaign fundraising professionals will tell you that this means that his "burn rate" (his expenses as a percentage of new donations) is alarming, at 87%. Condemn! Disaster!
But Warren did something else: she transferred $ 10.4 million that she had previously collected for her campaign account to the Senate on her presidential account. When this important transfer is taken into account, Warren ends the quarter with $ 11.2 million in cash. This is the second highest percentage in the Democratic realm, behind Sanders. (Kirsten Gillibrand, whose fundraising was half that of Warren, took a similar initiative, transferring $ 9.6 million from her account to the Senate.)
So despite all the hyperventilation, the lights are not about to extinguish in Warren's campaign. Yes, her first-quarter fundraising and her "burn rate" were not good, and she would probably need to improve them.
But Warren's smart decision last year to plan for the future and save that extra $ 10.4 million means she'll have the time to try and make that improvement. And even if she ends up being forced to cut back on her expenses or her staff, she would not be the first candidate to bounce back after such a decision (John McCain, for example, did that in the Republican primaries of 2008).
John Delaney's consultants win because he invests a lot of his money
It was all the way back in 2017 as the era-representative. John Delaney (D-MD) announced that he would run for president and started campaigning in the early states. Since then, he has not done much in the polls – he is stuck in the last group of candidates.
But Delaney is a rich man and his first quarter records reveal that he has lent more than $ 11 million to his campaign this year, which will leave him more cash ($ 10.5 million) than any other candidate, with the exception of Sanders and Warren. Who knows if all this money will help Delaney to actually improve in the polls, but the fact that he is willing to pay so much is certainly good news for his consultants and his campaign staff.
Donald Trump is ready to raise tons of money while Democrats are fighting
As for the current president, his own re-election campaign has been going on for more than two years. And unsurprisingly for an outgoing candidate who is very popular in his party, Donald Trump has assembled far more than any Democratic candidate in the first quarter of this year – about $ 39 million, when his campaign totals and two fundraising committees are combined. That's way less than the combined $ 84 million Democratic Fundraiser, but these Democrats will spend most of this money against each other.
Trump should easily win the GOP nomination (though he faces at least one opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld). But the most encouraging sign for him is perhaps that the fundraising of individual candidates on the Democratic side remains relatively lukewarm and that the field as a whole remains divided. This suggests that Trump could continue to accumulate a huge war chest in the general election while the Democrats fight over a long primary battle.
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