February 02, 2008
$32,000,000
I predicted right before the Iowa caucuses that one of the biggest impacts of "The First Campaign" would be how it would change the fundraising equation. What used to be a multi-week effort to get dollars in the door after a major win has been shortened to just hours. We saw this in 2000 on John McCain's campaign and in 2004 with Howard Dean and John Kerry after he secured the nomination.
Nevertheless Barack Obama's announcement this weekend that he raised $32 million in January—roughly a million dollars a day mostly online from small-dollar donors—is stunning. That's more money than any Republican candidate raised in the ENTIRE third quarter and more than Al Gore raised in the entire year leading up to his 2000 primary bid.
As Jeff Zeleny reports, some 170,000 new contributors gave just in January, pushing their total number of contributors up over 600,000—a stunning testament to the grassroots energy behind Obama today.
If Obama manages to catch Hillary it's going to be largely thanks to this incredible online money machine. Traditional bundling and fundraising techniques just can't compete with the speed of this primary season, meaning that candidates' bank accounts will be made or broken online. As one financier told Zeleny, "When you get $32 million in one month, it is not because you have bundlers working.... It is because you have an avalanche of small donors operating online. It's a revolution. People like me don't achieve those kinds of numbers."
What makes that number so much more powerful than Hillary's big dollar donor base is that they can keep donating $25 or $50 every time they get excited, meaning after every win or every inspirational email campaign.
If Obama performs well on Tuesday, just imagine the wealth that might start flowing!
