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:
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.
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
- Amount raised: More than $5 million
- Average donation: N/A
- Days in the race (through end of Q1): 59
Andrew Yang
- Amount raised: $1.7 million
- Average donation: $17.92
- Days in the race (through end of Q1): 511