On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) touted the nearly $25 million raised by the Trump reelection campaign and two joint-fundraising committees on the day he launched his 2020 reelection campaign — an astronomical haul, but one that comes with a few caveats.
In a tweet, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel tagged Trump and wrote that the president "raised a record breaking $24.8M in less than 24 hours for his reelection. The enthusiasm across the country for this President is unmatched and unlike anything we've ever seen! #trump2020 #KeepAmericaGreat."
Trump responded by quote-tweeting McDaniel and added, "THANK YOU!"
Assuming that the RNC and Trump are telling the truth about their Tuesday haul — and considering they'll eventually have to file federal fundraising disclosures detailing where the money came from, it's safe to assume that in this case they're probably not lying — the total is impressive in at least two ways.
First, relative to previous campaigns by incumbent presidents, raising $25 million in a single day is a ton of money. For instance, then-President Barack Obama raised $86 million during the entire first quarter of his reelection campaign in 2011 — a figure that Politico described as a "shock-and-awe showing" at the time. But Trump apparently raised nearly a third of that total in a single day, adding to the $93 million his campaign committee had reportedly raised as of last Friday. (Sen. Bernie Sanders had raised the most out of the candidates for the Democratic nomination at $21 million.)
Second, Trump's haul of $25 million on Tuesday alone is not only more than what each of the top five candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination raised combined in the first 24 hours after they launched their campaigns, but as Fox News reports, no candidate for the Democratic nomination even hit $20 million in the entire first quarter of the year.
This Fox News graphic illustrates the disparity.
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But there are major caveats to Trump's big fundraising day. For one, Trump is the only Republican running a viable presidential campaign. So while Republicans who want to donate money to a presidential campaign only have one candidate to give money to, Democrats are currently splitting their contributions between more than 20 candidates.
Second, Trump is benefitting from the advantages of incumbency. This was also the case for Obama in 2011, and other presidents before him, but Trump has exploited those advantages even more aggressively by, for instance, explicitly fundraising off speeches delivered from the Oval Office. The Trump campaign has also been especially shameless in using scammy Facebook ads and email lists to extract donations from supporters.
Lastly and unusually, Trump never really stopped campaigning after the 2016 election, giving him a two-year head start over the Democratic field. He officially announced his reelection campaign just days after he was inaugurated, and as a result has had way more money in his campaign coffers throughout his first term than did Obama, who didn't launch his reelection campaign until April 4, 2011, more than two years after his inauguration.
Nonetheless, in an interview with Vox, Douglas Weber, senior researcher at the Center for Responsible Politics, said there's no doubt $25 million "is an extraordinary amount of money to raise in one day."
As large as Trump's day-one haul is, Weber said the raw number touted by the RNC and Trump leaves out some important details that he'll be looking for when the Trump campaign makes its next filing with the Federal Elections Commission.
"It will be interesting to see what's the mix of donors," Weber said. "It would be extremely impressive if it mostly came from small donors — tens of thousands of people writing him checks in one day. On the other hand, if he's getting lots of people giving him the legal maximum, he could be getting a lot fewer donors but depending on relatively rich ones."
Trump has done very well with small donors so far — a dynamic Weber described as "getting the base of the Republican party to literally buy into the Trump campaign." Trump's first-quarter FEC filing indicates that out of the $30.3 million his campaign raised, an impressive amount came from donors giving less than $200, as OpenSecrets reported:
Perhaps most impressive is Trump's small donor dominance. Trump's campaign took in $3.3 million from donors giving less than $200 while his Make America Great Again joint fundraising committee received $17.4 million in small dollar contributions. The average donation from Trump supporters totaled little more than $34.26, according to the campaign, which informed the Associated Press.
Unlike Democrats, who have taken various pledges to reject corporate PAC money and high-dollar donations, Trump has done nothing of the kind. So the president already has powerful grassroots support and the backing of rich Republican megadonors who benefitted from the tax cut legislation Trump signed into law in late 2017.
But Trump hasn't been able to buy popularity — so far
While raking in a lot of money is important, it doesn't mean much if it doesn't translate to voters going out and voting for you. And that's why the biggest caveat to Trump's fundraising numbers is the fact that he's stubbornly unpopular.
Since taking office, Trump's approval rating has never broken 45 percent, and in 2019 it has ranged between 39 percent and 43 percent — numbers that would make it extremely tough for him to win reelection. Not only that, but even internal polling recently leaked from Trump's campaign showed him losing in head-to-head matchups against former Vice President Joe Biden in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida. (Trump responded to the leaks by firing pollsters and asserting the polls were fake.)
So while Trump's fundraising haul on Tuesday is very impressive, it won't mean much if his approval ratings and polling don't improve. And if his campaign kickoff in Orlando was any indication, Trump's reelection campaign will be focused on the familiar themes of demonizing Democrats and stoking fears — hardly the sort of message aimed at building a broad coalition of voters
That sort approach was enough to prevail over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and Trump now has the benefits of incumbency, a relatively strong economy, and a well-organized campaign infrastructure that stands in contrast to his seat-of-the-pants operation the first time around. But money and incumbency wasn't enough to buy Trump success during a midterm cycle in which his party lost 40 seats in the House and control of the chamber, and if early polling results hold, it likely won't be a winning strategy in 2020 — no matter how much cash his campaign and the RNC has in the bank.
The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox's policy and politics coverage.
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