Politics
How Did Democrats Out Raise Republicans Last Quarter? The answer is ActBlue.
Democrats “set [a] high bar in money race” for the second quarter of 2020. This “fundraising moment” allowed Democratic candidates to “blow past their Republican opponents,” as Democratic Senate candidates “pulled in a combined $102 million,” $32 million more than the total raised by Republicans.
Concerns about the potential of the coronavirus pandemic to impede campaign fundraising were overcome by adaptation to increased use of digital strategies and online fundraisers. The Democratic haul was attributed to “a surge in donor engagement.” As a result, “most Democrats in competitive Senate races outraised the Republican incumbent.” These numbers led a Republican consultant to say he was “scared to death by what we see.”
What is driving this surge in donations to Democratic candidates? One key facilitator is the online platform ActBlue. ActBlue allows Democratic campaigns and progressive causes to create fundraising pages on their sites geared toward soliciting small dollar contributions. ActBlue also provides a common place for grassroots progressives to donate to multiple campaigns and to set up recurring monthly payments. After ActBlue takes a small processing fee, it sends the money to the designated campaign.
And ActBlue sends a lot of money — $48 million to Joe Biden’s campaign in the second quarter 2020. Over $5 million each to the DCCC and the DSCC. This month, ActBlue reported big surges in contributions related to the protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, such as bail funds and voting rights organizations.
It sent millions to Democratic candidates trying to win a majority in the US Senate. The 30 Democratic Senate candidates who have won their party’s nomination or are safe incumbents raised an aggregated $38,609,406 from 949,882 individual ActBlue contributions, an average of $40.65 per contribution.
Democratic campaigns are quite happy to receive donations earmarked via ActBlue not just because they need money to educate voters about their candidate’s background and issue stands via television advertisements, digital advertising, and direct mail — raising funds on ActBlue cost them little in terms of time and effort.
Large dollar donations are typically raised by direct contact with a donor, usually by the candidate herself. Raising funds from large donors usually requires long hours on the telephone and seemingly longer conversations where donors often offer their own political advice.
On the other hand, donations from ActBlue usually come from solicitations emailed to a list of Democratic donors or activists. Campaigns often use links on their webpage to send donors to ActBlue. From a time and aggravation standpoint, these are much less onerous forms of raising money.
And the funds raised via ActBlue are more than just lagniappe for campaigns. Table 1 shows that nine Democratic candidates outraised their Republican opponent in the second quarter based on ActBlue contributions alone, before they raised a cent from any other sources. And while the majority of these nine are Democratic incumbents who are facing weak challengers in blue states (e.g. Jeff Merkley in Oregon, Cory Booker in New Jersey), there are several highly contested races listed here.
Kansas is a Republican state, but with the President’s sagging approval ratings and the potential of conservative hard-liner Kris Kobach as the Republican nominee in the open seat contest, Democrats think they have a shot at this seat, their donors believe it too. In North Carolina, Republican incumbent Tom Tillis is high on the Democrat’s target list. Donors, both big and small, helped Democratic nominee Cal Cunningham to a nearly 3-to-1 advantage in funds raised over Tillis. Polls show that incumbent Democrat Doug Jones is behind former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville in solidly Republican Alabama. But Jones has built a substantial fundraising edge over his opponent. Democrats hope that Tuberville’s penchant for losing contests at the last second in football carries over to politics.
There are six races where Democrats outraised a Republican incumbent thanks to contributions received via ActBlue. Table 2 shows these races.
These races show the promise and the peril of grassroots based fundraising. On one hand, the large contributions to Mark Kelly and John Hickenlooper, who are both favorites to win this November, show that grassroots donors can supplement the targeting strategies that focus funds on the races that their party most needs to win.
On the other hand, the huge numbers for Amy McGrath and Jamie Harrison show that one key source of grassroots energy is antipathy towards well-known Trump supporting incumbents. McGrath and Harrison are big underdogs running in red states. While Democrats gain some advantage from keeping Mitch McConnell and Lindsay Graham — two national figures — from aiding other candidates this Fall, no Democratic strategist would dedicate this share of resources to these seats.
Table 3 shows the fundraising totals for the other six competitive Senate races this cycle. In four of the six, the Democratic outraised the Republican, and in all six races, ActBlue made a substantial contribution to the coffers of each of the Democratic candidates. Five of the six raised over $1 million via ActBlue.
The 30 Democratic candidates under study raised just over one-third of their total contributions via ActBlue. These funds represent a substantial and expected part of the budget for a contemporary political campaign.
Democrats across the country are energized and enthusiastic about this year’s election. ActBlue has provided an avenue to channel that enthusiasm into action to the financial benefit of Democratic campaigns across the country this year.
