December 1, 2020

Trump Can’t Understand How Biden Beat Him So Badly. Here Are 360 Million Reasons.

Biden’s small-dollar fundraising operation shows a record level of grassroots support.

President Donald Trump drives a golf cart as he plays golf at Trump National Golf Club, Friday, Nov. 26, 2020, in Sterling, Va. Alex Brandon/AP

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As Donald Trump and his elder sons continue to toss out outlandish claims that the election was rigged, the president has repeatedly returned to the argument that fraud must have occurred because Joe Biden couldn’t have legitimately received a record-breaking 80 million votes.

Only fraud can account for Biden’s record-breaking vote total, the Trumps contend.

The Trumps seem intent on measuring a candidate’s ground game and enthusiasm by counting the number of campaign events he held and attendance at those rallies. But there’s a far better method: looking at donations, particularly small-dollar donations (which in the political world are donations of less than $200). And reviewing Biden’s fundraising numbers shows clearly that he had a historic level of grassroots enthusiasm fueling his campaign. 

Political operatives have long known the value of drumming up small donations and using them to measure enthusiasm. For starters, small-dollar donors tend to be more representative of the middle-and-working class. And it’s one thing to tell a pollster you like a candidate, place a free sign on your front lawn, or attend a free rally, but contributing represents another level of commitment and voter activation. Contributing also requires the donor to provide the campaign with contact information and other personal details that help enormously with ongoing outreach.

The Trumps recognize this themselves—Brad Parscale, who until July served as Trump’s campaign manager, built the Trump 2020 campaign into a massive small-dollar-fundraising and data-harvesting operation. It just fell short against Biden’s.

Here are the hard numbers. We know that by mid-October (the final fundraising data is still rolling in), Biden’s team had raised about 38.8 percent of the campaign’s haul from small-dollar donors. Only two candidates have ever raised a larger percentage of their campaign cash this way—Barack Obama in 2012 (42.6 percent) and Trump in 2020 (45 percent). But Biden raised far more ($363.3 million) from these small donors than did Obama ($234.3 million) or Trump ($260.1 million).

Trump did receive a historic number of votes for an incumbent president. He also raised a historic amount from small donors for a serving commander-in-chief. Biden just raised—and won—more. 

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

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