Elizabeth Warren is the only candidate to have forsworn big-dollar, big-donor fundraisers. Even Bernie Sanders is doing them. And it was a risk from day one.
I’ve long argued that this primary won’t revolve around money. As long as candidates have enough to build staff, that’s all that matters. This won’t be a nomination decided by TV ads, just like in 2016, when Donald Trump rode a wave of free “earned” media (TV news, newspapers, online, and social media) to the nomination barely spending a dime, while Jeb Bush and his $100+ million, and other well-funded candidates, quickly faded away.
And how much do you need to build staff? A lot less than it costs to finance television ads. Iowa may be cheap, but New Hampshire is in the Boston media market. And California is voting all of February, which means at least $5 million a week. Meanwhile, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and other high-cost states are all teed up soon thereafter.
Yet every non-Warren candidate is dutifully spending time with the wealthiest Americans, begging them for cash, while Warren is spending all that time with average Americans, taking tens of thousands of selfies with them (no exaggeration) in the process. Also, it apparently is giving her more time to focus on policy and plans. It’s worked out wonderfully if the polls are any indication! Except it seemed she was destined to bring up the fundraising rear come announcement time. That’s what happened after the first quarter, when she raised just $6 million. Again, enough to run a campaign! But lapped several times over by the rest of the field.
But in the second quarter, small-dollar donors rewarded Warren for her bet, and the result—$19.1 million—is nothing short of astonishing.
Everyone’s second-quarter fundraising numbers, in millions:
Candidate |
Q2 |
Donors |
per donor avg |
Q1 |
Trump |
$54M |
? |
? |
$7.3M |
Buttigieg |
$24.8M |
294K |
$84.35 |
$7M |
Biden |
$21.5M |
256K |
$83.98 |
n/a |
Warren |
$19.1M |
384K |
$49.74 |
$6M |
Sanders |
$18M |
? |
? |
$18.2M |
Harris |
$12M |
279K |
$43.01 |
$12M |
Bernie Sanders reported 1 million donations, but didn’t break it out by individual donors. Falling to fourth among Democrats, after leading the field in the first quarter, is yet more evidence of a moribund campaign. Sure, his $18 million matches the $18 million he raised in the first quarter, but his is not a campaign that will win by standing still.
Also, it’s weird that they didn’t report individual donors, instead hiding that number within that “individual donations” metric. Could it be that the number of those individual donors is falling, along with his poll numbers?
Buttigieg’s fundraising is nothing short of phenomenal, and comes at a time when he needed good news. He’s down to 5% support in the RCP polling aggregate, and his weak debate performance did him few favors. But that high average donation, on par with Biden’s shows his success in courting the big-dollar crowd: “During the second quarter, Mr. Buttigieg attended about 50 high-dollar fund-raising events, for which ticket prices typically run $2,800, the maximum individual contribution allowed by federal law in the primary,” reported the NY Times. “But he also held 20 ‘grassroots’ fund-raising events, for which ticket prices start as low as $15.”
Harris will likely report a blowout third quarter, given her breakout debate performance ($2 million of her haul came immediately after the debate). But she raised enough this quarter to fund her campaign operation. And I’ll repeat it over and over again—that’s enough this cycle. Her per-donor average is encouraging. It’s no accident that the two candidates with the best current trajectory are the two with the lowest per-donor average at this time.
But the big winner this quarter is clearly Elizabeth Warren, able to focus exclusively on meeting with voters while campaigning among regular voters. It’s a tactic that has already paid off in the polls, and is now paying off in the fundraising.
One final note, several laggard campaigns are whining that the DNC’s debate criteria for September, which requires 130,000 donors (as well as four polls above 2%), is too restrictive. But look at the number of donors above, by all the top campaigns. If the laggards can’t score half the donors of those campaigns, then they have no business being in the race. And by all means, they can stay in the race. It’s a free country! But no one owes them a debate stage.