For the First Time Since Their Campaigns Began, Sanders Raised More in a Month Than Clinton Did

Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders Holds Iowa Caucus Night Gathering
Bernie Sanders is feeling the love. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Perhaps Bernie Sanders’s musical side gig is paying off. Earlier this week, the Sanders campaign announced it had raised $20 million in January, outpacing Hillary Clinton for the first time since their campaigns began. Clinton’s campaign, which took in only (“only”) $15 million this month, and her staffers are acknowledging that they might be in for a longer, messier fight than originally projected. "I believe he will have the resources to push this campaign well into the spring,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters in New Hampshire, referring to Sanders. “I recognized in the summer of last year when those first fundraising reports came on that Sen. Sanders was going to raise a lot of money.”

That he did. Clinton’s war chest is still the biggest (she’s raised $127 million so far), but a report from the campaign states that Sanders received 770,000 individual contributions, averaging $27 apiece. Clinton’s campaign says 90 percent of its donations came in amounts of $100 or less, but it reportedly does rely on larger donations than the piecemeal online donations that make up nearly all of Sanders’s funding. Bernie’s campaign got a leg up the day after the Iowa caucus; following a hair’s-breadth defeat, his campaign received $3 million in a single day. He won’t need to rely on his residuals for a while yet.

Sanders Out-Raised Clinton in January