The final weeks of President Biden’s campaign were marked by mishaps and pressure from within his own party, as well as from Democrats’ key allies – as best exemplified by the George Clooney opinion piece calling for the elderly statesman to drop out.
For some time, one of the major concerns – along with Biden’s age – was the major donors’ reluctance to contribute to the incumbent.
As it turned out, all it took to restore the flow of money into the blue effort was a new nominee since, mere hours after it was announced that Vice President Kamala Harris would be running instead, the campaign was reported as having raised $50 million.
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The number became even more impressive by the end of the initial 24 hours as it rose to $81 million and, in the early hours of Tuesday, July 23 – less than 48 hours after the news broke – above $100 million.
Harris set to raise more than $8 billion at current pace
Such a donation rate means that Kamala Harris’ campaign is, by press time, gaining approximately $40,000 each minute. If the democratic candidate can sustain the pace by November 5, 2024, she will have raised more than $8.5 billion for her campaign.
For comparison, Joe Biden’s presidential bid was the most financially successful in history when it comes to contributions. In the 560 days between the initial announcement of candidacy in 2019 and the elections in November of the following year, Biden raised more than $1 billion.
Democrats set to again vastly outspend the Republicans
In fact, the Democrats spent so much on the last presidential election that some experts consider it to have given them an unfair advantage – a claim that is not entirely baseless given the impact campaign spending has on results.
Still, it remains highly unlikely Kamala Harris will sustain the current pace of contributions, given that it likely stemmed primarily from the breaking of the levy built to pressure President Biden into giving up the candidacy.
