Joe Biden Raised A Record-Breaking $383 Million In September
Presidential hopeful Joe Biden announced on Twitter Wednesday evening that his campaign raised $383 million in September, breaking the record he had just set the prior month.
The Democratic nominee has seen a historic surge of online donations according to CNN. This monthly total exceeded Biden’s August haul of $364.5 million, which his team called at the time “the best month of online fundraising in American political history.”
In his video, Biden thanked a grassroots supporter named Trimicka.
“That’s more money than I’ve ever raised in my whole life. I’m really humbled by it,” he said.
The amount also surpasses the $154 million amassed by Hillary Clinton when she was the Democratic nominee in September 2016.
The former vice president has accumulated three-quarters of a billion dollars in just two months, a formidable haul that has helped him put pressure on Donald Trump’s hopes for a second term. Trump’s team hasn’t released any information about their own donations from last month, but in August he raised $154 million less than his opponent, according to the Financial Times.
Biden, the Democratic National Committee and the campaign’s joint fundraising committees started the final month leading up to Election Day with $432 million in the bank, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote on Twitter. Over half of the money came from online donors, O’Malley Dillon said, and 1.1 million new donors were added last month alone. The average contribution was $44.
This record-breaking amount hints at how much the political landscape has changed since the spring when Trump had a nine-figure head start over the former vice president.
Biden’s pace over the last several months has given him the upper hand, as Politico reported. His selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate in August first helped him gain an influx of new supporters. The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg kicked off another surge of donations to the Democrat party. After the announcement of her death, donors gave over $100 million through ActBlue, the party’s widely used fundraising platform.
Democratic Senate candidates also received a significant amount of money in the past few months. Many are currently posting record-breaking totals for the third quarter as well.
On September 29, the nation saw the two candidates go head to head in their first presidential debate, during which the Biden camp received $10 million from 9 p.m. to midnight. During the 10 p.m. hour alone, a massive $3.8 million was given by viewers. The next day was Biden’s best so far for fundraising as the campaign brought in more than $21 million.
Both candidates will be holding simultaneous town halls on Thursday evening after plans for a virtual debate were scrapped, as The Inquisitr reported. Biden’s town hall will be aired on ABC, whereas NBC — the former home of Trump’s reality show, The Apprentice — will be hosting the president.
