The figures for the third quarter of campaign fundraising are in and it seems that Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is literally giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money.
Bloomberg Politics reports that “In the run up the 2016 primary elections, conventional wisdom had it that insider candidates who had long cultivated relationships with establishment donors would easily be able to out-raise outsiders whose support came from the grassroots,” but looking at the numbers – that clearly isn’t the case.
According to Bloomberg, “Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, took in $26 million, almost matching the $28 million brought in by his Democratic rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who focused on events for big donors. “
However, as The Washington Post reports, that $2 million doesn’t begin to tell the real story:
Clinton held 58 fundraising events to raise her total; Sanders held seven. As of the end of September, Sanders had brought in 1.3 million total donations from 650,000 individuals since he began running. Clinton’s campaign did not release how many total donors she has. And Sanders ended September with $25 million in the bank; Clinton did not release how much money her campaign had on hand.
Read between the lines, and you get this: Sanders is drawing huge amounts of small-dollar donations via the Web. That means two important things: (1) Sanders has been able to concentrate on meeting and greeting potential voters rather than spending his time courting donors, and (2) He has been able to conserve money because he isn’t spending cash on lavish events for donors.
Vanity Fair also notes that “Sanders is the first candidate to announce he surpassed 1 million individual online contributions—a milestone he reached earlier in the campaign cycle than President Obama did in both 2008 and 2012. It took Obama until February to reach 1 million donations the first time around, and October the second [time].”
As The Washington Post concluded: “Sometimes, top-line numbers don’t tell the whole story. This is one of those cases. Yes, Clinton raised the most money. But, make no mistake: This is Sanders’s quarter.”
You can watch a news report by Bloomberg Politics, below:
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