Poll coming. Let’s predict who raises the most in January 2020.
Now that we’re in the election year, the fundraising reports will be monthly. It’s the run up to IA and NH, so I’m getting bombarded with emails and texts from just about everyone but haven’t gotten anything desperate like last month’s Warren stuff. The main question I’m looking at is will Yang continue to keep the money flowing in, especially after missing the debate. He surprised everyone in Q4 2019, but I think he fades in January fundraising.
I’ll predict Bernie raises the most. He’s got that email list of small donors and damn they’re loyal. I only hope people are exaggerating on the Bernie subreddit about skipping meals to donate to Bernie. I know I crowed loudly on social media that I was donating $75 to Pete rather than going to a nightclub for NYE, but skipping a crowded NYE party isn’t the same as skipping meals.
I’ll predict Pete for second followed by Warren then Biden then Yang then Klobuchar.
If one is to include donations from the candidates themselves to their campaigns, Styer laps your field and Bloomberg laps your field plus Styer. Money really matters.
I think you’re probably right about Sanders, but Mayor Pete has some big money donors.
I agree that the personal donations from a candidate’s own money towards their own campaigns don’t count.
That’s different than the money that Warren and Sanders transferred from their Senate campaigns which is reported. For example, Warren transferred ten million dollars in leftover Senate campaign funds to her presidential campaign in Q3.
‘Big money donors’ are irrelevant. For the primary, the maximum anyone can give is $2800. Sanders can get someone to donate $28 100 times or send $2800 in one fell swoop. That’s the maximum. So-called big donors to Sanders can always donate to Our Revolution PAC if they exceed that.
I do think a candidate like Pete has a lot of people that donate more but less often. That’s a good strategy to help (very slightly) reduce the endless bombardment of fundraising emails.
That’s the calendar that will drive the news, and the results of those primaries and caucuses are what will drive fundraising from then on.
The point of January fundraising was to have money to contest Iowa and NH. By the time candidates have to release their January fundraising numbers, the Iowa results will be driving the news and subsequent fundraising, and the effects of January fundraising will be baked into that. They won’t matter as a separate thing of their own anymore.
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Any campaign that thinks it has a chance better have been doing MUCH more than simply contesting IA and NH during Jan. The schedule is different in critical ways then the old rules of thumb capture. It is front loaded in a way it wasn’t when those rules of thumb entered the public consciousness. The move towards early voting and easier absentee voting effectively front loads the schedule further. That move is especially strong in states that Democrats dominate where DNC rules award extra delegates.
Some other dates to compare to that schedule. I will run through one week after the NH primary when we could reasonably expect money from a strong NH showing to start to be available for significant spending. Dates extracted from the wikipedia entry for the 2020 Dem primary page.
6 states are already voting. 7 will be voting by the time of the Iowa caucus. California, with its giant haul of delegates, mails its absentee ballots the same day as Iowa. That means 8 states voting before the NH primary. 15 states that aren’t either Iowa or New Hampshire will be voting before a post NH fundraising bump can reasonably start to have any significant effect. This primary is simply not the same as primaries where the old rules of thumb worked.
The numbers may not matter as a story by the time they are released. They are huge for not getting crushed in the votes that won’t be reported until early March.
I imagine January fundraising numbers won’t be as crucial as we’ve got our big 4 and that won’t change until voting begins. I’m most interested in Warren. She abandoned the wine cave stuff and the billionaire tears in January. Did it increase fundraising? How about the Bernie dust up and the snakes?
Aside from that, does Yang not making the debate stage cause his $$$ to dry up? I don’t think he’s running a particularly expensive campaign but as voting begins will his sideshow not get any attention?
If the run rate continues, it would be $20.1M for the quarter which would be higher than the $16.5M from last quarter. On the last day of the month, Ming put up a map showing that the donations came from pretty much every state in the country.
The night of the January debate that he missed brought more media attention and more verified twitter accounts that were mentioning Yang than I’ve seen with any debate in the past. That night, the Dave Chappelle endorsement was formally announced, as well as some activities from the campaign.
IIRC, he had the 2nd most twitter followers and the 4th most mentions on twitter, as well as a leading international hashtag that night.
That was the night the momentum took off for the campaign, particularly in regards to traditional media.
I got a text from Pete saying they met their January goal but I haven’t found the numbers yet. Pete usually releases on the first day, it may be buried in my email.
Well yeah, but the point is that almost nobody outside the campaigns themselves will have an interest in the January fundraising numbers, the point being that money is there to produce caucus and primary results, and two nights from now, results are what we’ll have. And after that, the calendar will have wave after wave of debates, primaries, debates, caucuses, etc.
The reason candidates’ Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 fundraising from 2019 was newsworthy at the time was that we didn’t have any primary or caucus results yet, and so the polls and the money represented the potential to achieve those results. They were all we had at the time. That won’t be the case 60 hours from now.
You may be right about all that stuff you said, but it’s completely sideways to my point.
That’s right: “Wine Cave” Pete solidified his hold on that nickname by raising a smaller share of his January fundraising from small-dollar donors than any of the other candidates except for the two billionaires.