Kamala Harris’ campaign announced Sunday that it had racked up $540 million in donations over its first month—an amazing number. But the $82 million that came in during last week’s Democratic National Convention shows that the campaign is maintaining the momentum and excitement that greeted the vice president’s late entry into the race after President Joe Biden stepped aside on July 21.
Just as exciting is the number of regular people who have signed on to become personally involved in seeing Harris elected the next president of the United States. Over 400,000 people have signed on as volunteers, according to the Harris-Walz campaign. During the week of the DNC alone, volunteers signed up for 200,000 shifts of campaign work. Based on an estimate from Independent Sector, those hours of unpaid work represent the equivalent of another $53 million coming in over that one week.
But really, those unpaid workers are priceless. Because all the television ads and social media posts in the world can’t match the value of genuine Harris supporters bringing their personal message to potential voters and delivering it one-on-one.
That wealth of volunteers could be on display this week as Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, begin a bus tour around south Georgia. The campaign has already hired 174 staffers in 24 campaign offices across the state, but 35,000 volunteers will be bolstering that paid staff.
The combination of dollars and volunteers is enabling the campaign to conduct what it calls “the largest in-state operation of any Democratic presidential campaign cycle ever in Georgia.” With ABC’s 538 polling average placing Trump ahead in Georgia by just 0.7% this week, those volunteers could be critical to the outcome in the Peach State.
The Harris campaign says that one-third of donations received last week, while the Democratic National Convention was happening, came from first-time donors. That’s another amazing number, as it shows that Harris and Walz aren’t even close to tapping out the potential for their campaign. Of those first-time donors, about one-fifth of them were young voters making their first foray into political donations.
Two-thirds of the first-time donations came from women. If Trump thinks that abortion is no longer an issue or, even more ridiculously, that “everybody” wanted Roe v. Wade “terminated,” he’s very wrong.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, meet with volunteers making signs in Phoenix, Arizona, on Aug. 9, 2024.
Reproductive rights are far from the only reason that women are volunteering their time and money to Harris. The opportunity to finally have the first woman president certainly factors in. So does distaste over the prospect of voting for a man found liable for sexual assault. But abortion remains a potent issue, and no amount of trying to weasel around it is going to make that go away.
At the moment, it’s still too early to tell how much of a post-convention bump Harris will see in the polls. There are indications that the race continues to shift in her direction, but there aren’t enough results from polls taken since the DNC began to see if the joy that was so obvious in that Chicago arena translated into rising support across the nation.
However, that astounding $540 million in fundraising and 400,000 volunteers certainly signals something. Harris’ contributions are beating Trump’s, even as the top four big-money contributors are all cutting checks for Trump's campaign.
When Harris entered the race and gathered $81 million in 24 hours, people worried that it was a fluke. When Harris surged into a lead in national polls, insiders shrugged it off as a “honeymoon period.”
But if this is a honeymoon, it’s a long one. And it may just keep going right on through Election Day.
Build the enthusiasm: This is a great day to make sure that Kamala Harris’ campaign enjoys a never-ending surge by sending $10.
Share the joy: Volunteer to help the campaign get out the vote. Click here to view multiple ways you can help reach voters—by text-banking, phone-banking, letters, postcards, parties, or canvassing.
