Obama Raises $20 Million -- Total Reaches Nearly $80 Million
Barack Obama's third quarter numbers are in: He raised $20 million, from over 93,000 donors. The campaign confirms that he's now received donations from a total of more than 350,000 donors, an eye-opening number by any measure. The campaign has raised a startling total of $78 million, nearly all of it to be used for the primary.
The latest haul netted Obama at least $19 million for the primary. That's a drop from the $33 million he raised last quarter. But that number will likely be overshadowed by another key number: The campaign says they pulled in nearly 100,000 new donors, a good pull for the summer months that obviously expands their small donor pool in a big way, meaning lots more donors to go back to as the campaign kicks into high gear.
Hillary sources are saying that she raised $17 million to $20 million, meaning the best she'll do is tie, unless her people were playing the expectations game and leaking deliberately deflated totals. It's unclear as yet when Hillary's totals will be announced.
Comments (26)
surfer-z wrote on October 1, 2007 2:07 PM:i don't have money to give, but I think i'll vote for obama
Jeremy wrote on October 1, 2007 2:16 PM:It's amazing how Obama has translated his unique experience as a community organizer into a campaign built around new model of national organizing that is outperforming the Clintons. Obama is delivering what Dean only promised, a nationwide grass-roots political movement that can compete with the machine.
IWW wrote on October 1, 2007 2:17 PM:Clarification query: how can the total donors and the total new donors be the same? Is it 100,000 new donors, or 93,000 total donors for the quarter?
Still v.v. impressive, either way, but it would be nice to know which.
keith wrote on October 1, 2007 2:20 PM:He has 93,000 new donors. The total donations was $19MM, with an additional $1MM for the general.
rssrai wrote on October 1, 2007 2:26 PM:How much has he spent? I think he advertised big time in Iowa, so I bet he has spent a good bit of money in the 3rd quarter.
Colin wrote on October 1, 2007 2:28 PM:Your confusion over the number like results from the use of "nearly 100,000 new donors."
horizonr wrote on October 1, 2007 2:34 PM:CORRECTION
Technically, it's true that that Obama "raised $20 million, from over 93,000 donors." But this leaves the impression that Obama's Q3 donor base is roughly 93K, which is incorrect.
Actually, Obama added 93K new donors this quarter, for a total of 351K -- that's the significance of that number.
The Q3 donor base includes these 93K plus all the repeat donors from among the 258K donors that Obama started with on Day 1 of Q3.
Please correct this.
sceptic wrote on October 1, 2007 2:46 PM:people are overlooking teh organized effort by Republicans to fund Obama (much like the effort to fund Ralph Nadar) - how to mobilize the right wing in face of a lackluster R candidate? The race card -
dcshungu wrote on October 1, 2007 2:48 PM:Can a presidential candidate keep money raised in one election cycle if s/he does not win the nomination\, and spend it 4 or 8 later? If I were Obama, I would save the loot and spend it when I would have a better chance of winning, not just the nomination but also the "whole shebang."
keith wrote on October 1, 2007 2:53 PM:dcshungu:
I'm pretty positive Senator Obama doesn't need your advice. But to answer your question, they can use the money for subsequent races. HRC contributed something like $10MM from her senate campaign fund to her presidential fund in 1Q07 and I think John Kerry did as well.
colonpowwow wrote on October 1, 2007 2:59 PM:Good for him. I think Obama has brought many positive things to the table, and I'm anticipating a strong and positive campaign for the nomination between the two of them.
I will definitely work for him and vote for him proudly if he happens to beat my preferred candidate for the nomination (HRC).
One of the many positive things Obama brings to the table is his continuing to center his campaign on the "grassroots" populism so well enveloped by Howard Dean in the last cycle (He's another Democrat I like a lot).
I trust the supporters of Obama will have no trouble throwing their support in the same direction as Howard Dean and Barack Obama will - if Hillary ends up winning the nomination of the Democratic Party.
Hatch wrote on October 1, 2007 2:59 PM:people are overlooking teh organized effort by Republicans to fund Obama
What on earth are you talking about?
dcshungu wrote on October 1, 2007 3:00 PM:people are overlooking teh organized effort by Republicans to fund Obama (much like the effort to fund Ralph Nadar) - how to mobilize the right wing in face of a lackluster R candidate? The race card -
While I would not subscribe to notion that the Repubs have setup an "organized effort by Republicans to fund Obama> I have no doubt that should Obama be the Dem nominee, the race card will be very central to their strategy, and this makes Obama particularly vulnerable. Rudy's strength in the Repub field is a puzzle until your realize that the Repubs will abandon their principles for a win. Their biggest nightmare is Hillary, and the latest Survey USA numbers out of New York and California, which show Clinton literally crushing Rudy and the rest of them, but become competitive when either Obama or Edwards are matched against Giuliani, definitely gives then cause to worry about HRC. NY and CA should not be competitive for the Dems. Those two Dem bastions should be a blow out every time. If they are competitive then it would be a Repub victory by a landslide. At the moment, in poll after poll, Clinton is the Dem's strongest candidate in GE. She would win FL, AR, and some purple states, in addition to easily winning virtually every blue state. Obama will win zilch in the red and purple states, and would even lose some blue states because bigotry will still be alive and well is 2008 USA. The Repubs, whose future standard-bearers
skipped the black-sponsored debate in Baltimore last week in a not so subtle subliminal message, will make sure that the ante bellum menatlity is fully awake in white America in time for the election, if Obama is the Dem nominee. It is sad but no rocket science: That will be their strategy and they are not even bothering to hide it...
I think the difference in total new donors is that by the end of the 2nd quarter, he had about 258,000 donors, and added 93,000 new donors for a total to date of 351,000+ donors for the three quarters.
As I said in another thread, Obama is the one proven to be able to 'hit the ground running' in terms of gathering and organizing resources.
Even if Hillary matches his 20 million this quarter, he has so far out-raised her at least by 4.5 million for the primary. If we really want to compare performance, then take off the 10 million Hillary transferred from her Senate re-election account. Then, we have an apples to apples comparison which tells us that his abilities are even more impressive. Obama has out-performed Hillary by 25%.
Dave wrote on October 1, 2007 3:03 PM:But to answer your question, they can use the money for subsequent races. HRC contributed something like $10MM from her senate campaign fund to her presidential fund in 1Q07 and I think John Kerry did as well.
Thats always been one of the interesting little loop-holes of McCain-Feingold to me; Senators can roll money over whereas Governors can't.
The conspiracy theorist impulse may have you believe McCain and Russ has some ulterior motives putting that into place...
fuzz wrote on October 1, 2007 3:13 PM:I'm not buying that, sceptic. The right-wingers have a visceral freak-out response to Hillary that's more potent than "the race card" to any but the most dedicated Klansmen.
I am interested in the spending numbers so far. Is that data available?
dcshugu wrote on October 1, 2007 3:39 PM:I am interested in the spending numbers so far. Is that data available?
The only numbers is saw were Obama's in Iowa alone: $3 Mill.
mopper wrote on October 1, 2007 3:47 PM:Obama has spent ~2.8 million in Iowa in advertising, but that's really his only big expense. He just went up on TV in NH for the first time last week, and only bought a radio ad in SC. After 2 quarters, he actually had the lowest burn rate of the main candidates as I recall.
mopper wrote on October 1, 2007 3:52 PM:Yeah, I remembered right: his burn-rate was monumentally lower than the other candidates', in spite of spending more than they did. That is, he was both more liberal and more frugal in his spending at the same time: he spent more than anyone else, and saved more pennies on each dollar raised than anyone else. The power of a big fundraising apparatus right there.
The most interesting figure available to us today, as we pour over the 2nd quarter financial disbursements, is the average burn rate, which is calculated by adding the money spent plus ddebt, and dividing that by the amount of money raised for the primary elections.
In Obama's case, that's $16M spent + 0.92M debt divided by $32M raised -- or 53%.
Even though Obama spent more than Clinton -- either a little if you count debt or a lot -- he managed to keep half of what we took in. His fundraising will simmer down a bit in the third quarter, but it's fairly easy to imagine that he'll gave $25M or so in the bank come January, which will give him more than enough money to blanket the early (and later) primary states with those biographical ads that Obama's team loves to make.
Clinton burned through 73 cents out of every primary dollar she raised. That's a lot, but it's still an impressive figure. John Edwards spent 74 cents out of every dollar raised; Bill Richardson spent about 71 cents for every dollar raised.
And yet the NYT finds the most relevant question to ask to be -- "why the dropoff?"
Un-fing-believable.
When was the last time they had a political reporter worthy of the name?
dndobson wrote on October 1, 2007 7:12 PM:I love it.
Hillary can't win 'cause she'll drive Republicans to vote agaisnst her.
Obama can't win cause he'll drive the racists to vote against him.
Um, hello, we're talking about the same people here!
;-)
Anonymous wrote on October 1, 2007 7:19 PM:"small" donor pool? He has more donors than any other candidate and may still have more donors than the Repub field combined. That is NOT a small donor pool.
power forward wrote on October 1, 2007 8:11 PM:About Republicans funding Obama...
I don't believe for a second the paranoid fantasy that Republicans are picking a Democrat to fund...heck, the RNCC is in the red.
But Obama does have some cross-over appeal to some folks who traditionally vote Republican. Take, for instance, my mother. She is a life-long Republican but thinks highly of Obama and voted for him for Senator. Yes I know he did not face a real opponent, but I believe my mom would have voted for him in any event. She has grown increasingly disgusted with all the Senatorial candidates from Illinois--Barack is the first one she's liked in at least ten years.
Henry wrote on October 1, 2007 8:26 PM:"small" donor pool? He has more donors than any other candidate and may still have more donors than the Repub field combined. That is NOT a small donor pool.
Dear Anonymous, no it is not a small donor pool; it's a large pool of 'small donors'. It was meant as a good thing. It means that they have not maxed-out their contributions, so the campaign can go back to them for more, instead of having to identify new donors.
Jack Schaller wrote on October 1, 2007 10:11 PM:Look my dear friends - all of us like and respect deeply Barak Obama (I'm an Edwards supporter, but so what).
Despite Sen. Obama's impressive fund raising efforts, he's not moved the polls at all. HRC is now beating him by virtually two to one.
Just deal with it - he ain't gonna take the top spot on the ticket and I have no idea if the Clinton machine wants him on the second spot or if he would even take it.
We need to take the WH - hold our margins in the Senate and the House - and then, go on with the process of governing.
Cheers -
DTM wrote on October 2, 2007 4:26 AM:power forward is correct: Obama has demonstrated his ability to attract relatively large amounts of support among Republicans (and the overlapping categories of white, conservative, and rural voters) in Illinois. See here for a side-by-side comparison of Obama and Durbin (an otherwise pretty popular and fairly representative Democrat), with lots of cross tabs:
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=9acde2f2-da64-4175-bb54-121eaf30bb18
And then of course there was that interesting University of Iowa poll, where Republicans were allowed just to name who they supported, and Obama came in third:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/24/obama_gop/
Of course, he still only got 7% in that poll, so the idea that this relative support among Republicans could translate into serious primary dollars--particularly when the Republicans themselves are experiencing fund-raising issues--is a bit far-fetched. But when thinking about possible victory margins in a general election, or possible effects on downticket races in that election cycle, I think it is highly relevant that Obama has proven his ability to appeal to non-Democrats.
