Former Vice President Joe Biden raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours since he officially announced his presidential run on Thursday. The total released by his campaign is the highest of any 2020 Democratic presidential candidate’s first-day haul.
“We are incredibly heartened by the energy and enthusiasm displayed throughout the country for Joe Biden,” said Kate Bedingfield, his deputy campaign manager.
The first-day total consists solely of money raised for the primary election, according to the Daily Beast. The campaign received 107,431 online donations from 96,926 individuals. Some 97% of these online donations were under $200 each. The average online donation was $41. The campaign has said it is not raising money from corporate political action committees, registered lobbyists or registered foreign agents.
Biden’s numbers beat this year’s first-day totals for former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) ― who pulled in $6.1 million ― and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ― who raised $5.9 million. O’Rourke’s total included some contributions that can only be spent in the general election.
The figures released by the Biden campaign don’t provide much information about how the former vice president raised his money. The proffered statistics relate solely to online donations and do not note how many people contributed to the campaign overall or how large the overall average contribution was. Nor does the campaign’s press release reveal the total raised from small donors ― a measure that has already become a talking point in the primary campaign.
The average for all donations will certainly be higher than the average for online donations alone. Biden attended a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of David Cohen, the head of Comcast’s lobbying operation and a longtime major Democratic Party donor, on Thursday evening. (Cohen is not a registered lobbyist.) The event brought in $700,000, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Other primary candidates like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have eschewed these high-dollar events in favor of small donors. President Barack Obama, however, held more big-dollar fundraising events than any prior president during his 2012 reelection campaign.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for further elaboration on its fundraising numbers.