[S]ince announcing his presidential campaign in February, Sen. Bernie Sanders has raised $18.2 million, from a total of about 900,000 individual donations, his campaign announced Tuesday.
The fundraising figures show the Sanders campaign fell short of its goal for the first quarter of 2019: to reach one million individual donations in about six weeks.
But campaign officials said that this financial target had always been ambitious, and was meant to galvanize Sanders’ grassroots base.
With the funds Sanders already has available — about $28 million in cash on hand — he will be able to build infrastructure in key primary states, they said.
Unlike in 2016, when it took Sanders almost four times as long to bring in 900,000 donations, the campaign won’t be forced to prioritize some locations over others.
Sanders has already hired staff in South Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada and Iowa, and will start staffing up in California in the coming weeks.
“These resources are going to allow us to compete on all levels in all of the Super Tuesday states,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ 2016 campaign manager and a senior adviser to the senator, told reporters on a conference call Tuesday.
While most 2020 candidates have yet to make their first quarter finance reports public, Sanders’ early fundraising is expected to largely eclipse other Democrats running in the crowded presidential field.
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas likely poses the most serious fundraising challenge to Sanders.
While Sanders was able to raise $5.9 million within the first 24 hours of his campaign, when O’Rourke announced on March 14, he topped Sanders by bringing in $6.1 million in a single day.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California announced on Monday that her campaign had raised $12 million so far. The mayor of South Bend Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, whose campaign has gained momentum in recent weeks, has raised $7 million.
The Sanders campaign touted Tuesday that the majority of its donations so far — 99.5% — have come from people giving $100 or less. Roughly 525,000 individual donors have contributed to the campaign.
“There have been no high-dollar fundraising events, there’s no kowtowing at the altars of the rich … that is not this campaign,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ 2020 campaign manager.
Sanders has been performing well in presidential polls, typically leading all 2020 candidates who have announced so far, and trailing only potential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden in some surveys.
Sanders is particularly popular among younger voters. A poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics released Tuesday shows Sanders with the support of 30% of voters age 18-29, and leading Biden and O’Rourke by 10 and 20 points, respectively.
