Politics

Here's what the 2020 Democratic candidates say they've raised in the first quarter

Key Points
  • Eight presidential hopefuls so far have shared their first-quarter fundraising totals.
  • Bernie Sanders leads the pack with $18.2 million.
  • Not all of the money has come in the same time interval for each of the Democrats, nor is it arriving in a steady trickle.
2020 Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks during a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on March 9, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa.
Steve Pope | Getty Images

The money primary in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination is coming into focus, and Bernie Sanders is the early frontrunner.

Of the wide slate of Democrats running to take on President Donald Trump, eight presidential hopefuls so far have shared their first-quarter fundraising totals.

The results, which covered the period between Jan. 1 and March 31, are due to be filed by April 15, according to Federal Election Commission rules. But a trickle of Trump's would-be challengers are already posting their results publicly.

The eight candidates who have shared their recent campaign totals so far are just as diverse as the broader Democratic field.

Five of them — Sanders of Vermont, California's Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New Jersey's Cory Booker — are currently U.S. senators. The others are former House member and Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and entrepreneur and free-money advocate Andrew Yang.

At the bottom end of the fundraising spectrum, Yang said his campaign has raised $1.7 million. Sanders, whose galvanizing 2016 campaign gave eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton an unexpected run for her money, led the pack with a whopping $18.2 million, according to his campaign.

But looks can be deceptive. Not all of the money came in the same time interval for each of the Democrats, nor did it arrive in a steady flow, according to various news outlets.

Buttigieg's $7 million appears to put him in close contention with O'Rourke for first-quarter fundraising, for instance, but the Indiana mayor also announced his exploratory committee weeks before O'Rourke officially entered the race.

The average daily totals for each candidate, calculated by a Washington Post reporter, tell a different story:

Viser TWEET To account for candidates entering the race at different stages in the first quarter, the daily haul for candidates so far: Beto O'Rourke: $522k Bernie Sanders: $444k Kamala Harris: $171k Pete Buttigieg $103k

Removing the candidates' first-day hauls, which are usually their highest-grossing fundraising periods, can perhaps provide a clearer view of how much money came into a campaign on a typical day.

While the Post reported that O'Rourke notched the highest daily average, NBC News showed that Sanders far outpaced him once the day-one figures were removed from the equation.

Kamisar TWEET Deeper dive than most of you care about: Excluding their first day hauls (O'Rourke $6.1 mil, Sanders $6 mil), Sanders raised $305,000 per day as a candidate while O'Rourke raised $194,117 per day as a candidate).

Here's what the 2020 Democrats say they've raised so far:

Bernie Sanders

  • Amount raised: $18.2 million
  • Average donation: $20
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 41

Kamala Harris

  • Amount raised: $12 million
  • Average donation: $55
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 64

Beto O'Rourke

  • Amount raised: $9.4 million
  • Average donation: N/A
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 18

Pete Buttigieg

  • Amount raised: $7 million
  • Average donation: $36.35
  • Days since launching exploratory committee (through end of Q1): 68

Elizabeth Warren

  • Amount raised: $6 million
  • Average donation: $28
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 51

Amy Klobuchar

  • Amount raised: $5.2 million
  • Average donation: N/A
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 50

Cory Booker

Andrew Yang

  • Amount raised: $1.7 million
  • Average donation: $17.92
  • Days in the race (through end of Q1): 511