The 5 Days That Reshaped the 2020 Primary

“I was honestly not aware of that,” Harris said in a recent interview, asking her staff half-jokingly, “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

They might not have briefed her on the details — that in June she twice failed to crack $10,000 in online donations in a day — but the decline was very much the backdrop to the first debate in June, her chance to turn it around. Harris’ exchange with former Vice President Joe Biden over his history on race was like injecting rocket fuel into a starved engine: She netted $4.2 million in the following four days, $3.4 million online — about as much as she had raised digitally in the previous 10 weeks combined.

For the 23 people now running for president as Democrats, there are good days and bad days. But, most important, there are big days. The days that keep the lights on. The days that fundamentally alter one’s trajectory. And these days often played out on television, and then reverberated on social media, showcasing how viral moments are so often driving donations and the race writ large.

To pinpoint those moments, The New York Times analyzed 5.8 million donations, melding together election filings from all the candidates and ActBlue, the party’s dominant donation-processing platform.

The analysis shows the dizzying climb of Pete Buttigieg (from 25 donations in a day to nearly $25 million in a quarter), the precipitous plunge of Beto O’Rourke (more donations in his first 48 hours than his next 2,500) and the steady metronome of Sen. Bernie Sanders (never fewer than 1,000 donations in a day). For some candidates, like Biden, their strongest day for fundraising was the first, and for others, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the best day came last, when she scored her first $1 million day June 30.

Taken together, the donation data, which accounts for more than 90% of the money raised, paints a vivid portrait of a volatile primary’s ups and downs, a day-by-day, dollar-by-dollar reconstruction of the first six months of the 2020 Democratic primary, telling the story of who the front-runners are and how they emerged.

Julia Rosen, a Democratic digital strategist who previously worked for ActBlue, where she had access to such data, called it the “God-view” of modern campaigns.

“You can see everything,” she said.

JUNE 27

The day Harris said, ‘That little girl was me’

From the start of the campaign and her 20,000-strong kickoff rally in Oakland, California, Harris and her team had sold her as a top-tier campaign. But as she headed into the first debate in June, her trajectory put her at risk of falling far behind the financial front-runners.

Her taking Biden to task over his fond recollections of working with segregationist senators and his opposition to mandated busing changed that in a matter of minutes.

“Anyway, my time is up,” Biden muttered in response.

Harris would collect 112,000-plus donations in the last four days of June.

Before the debate, Harris’ strongest moment since her announcement had been her Senate Judiciary Committee questioning of Attorney General William Barr, which went viral in May. It caused a two-day spike of 17,500 donations.

Both peaks mirrored a trend across the contest: There is nothing comparable to a command performance on live television. That is reflected in donations — and polling.

Shortly after the first debate, Harris raced to 20% in a Quinnipiac poll. She checked in with her advisers, doubting the surge could be real. “The numbers jumped so significantly the day after, I felt that it had to be a sugar high,” Harris said in the interview. Sure enough, she was back to single digits after the second debate, at 7%.

In some ways, the most lasting legacy of her showdown with Biden was the influx of cash.

“It was legitimately a game-changer,” said Dan Newman, a former longtime Harris adviser. “With the caveat,” he added, “that the game changes a lot between now and Election Day.”

APRIL 19

The day Warren called for impeachment

Back when he was a digital strategist for Barack Obama, Joe Rospars, one of Warren’s top advisers, used to tell people that constructing a digital fundraising apparatus was mostly the act of putting out buckets and hoping for rain.

In January, Warren had buckets but no rain. The most arid day came on her 20th as a 2020 candidate, when she processed 202 donations worth a combined $5,548. That night, actress Kate McKinnon likened Warren’s candidacy on “Saturday Night Live” to a doctor offering a prostate exam. “Bend over, America,” the actress said, “and let Mama Warren get to work.”

Days after the “SNL” segment, Warren rolled out her tax plan on the super wealthy. Donations ticked up. They did so again when she proposed universal child care in February. And breaking up big tech in March.

Her campaign describes her decision in late February to swear off traditional fundraising with rich donors as a particularly crucial gamble that paid dividends. She brags regularly about how she calls small donors instead of the big bundlers who collect $2,800 checks.

What made Warren’s campaign unique was its ability to spin policy and political pronouncements into financial support. In other words, they made it rain. Caitlin Mitchell, who oversees Warren’s fundraising as chief mobilization officer, said that donors respond “when Elizabeth takes a strong and moral stand.”

But her first key inflection point came from television, when she laid out her agenda in a March CNN town hall that drew nearly 1.1 million viewers. In the 30 days ahead of that appearance, she had averaged 1,600 donations per day; in the 30 days after, 3,800 per day.

All but one of 50 of Warren’s worst fundraising days came before that town hall, including more than a dozen after her disavowal of big-money events.

No announcement seemed to goose the grassroots as much as her April 19 call for congressional impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

“I want to make sure you know where I stand,” she wrote supporters. The email did not include a donate button. It did not matter. The donations came anyway. Contributions per day jumped by 50% in the 30 days after, compared with the month before.

For Warren, the impeachment call was quickly followed by her second CNN town hall, her plan to cancel most student debt, and then Biden’s entry — a weeklong run that moved her fundraising to a new plateau. Heading into the first debate in June, she was averaging $195,000 per day — without holding any fundraisers.

Before April 19, Warren had gone 68 different days raising less than $50,000.

Afterward? Zero.

MARCH 19

The day Sanders got everyone to keep giving

The third Tuesday in March was a quiet day for Sanders. He held no public events. His campaign sent no mass emails asking for money. He still received almost 33,000 contributions worth more than $475,000.

The 19th of the month is always a good day for Sanders.

When he entered the 2020 race Feb. 19, droves of supporters signed up to make automatic monthly contributions. Since then, he has processed at least a combined 40,000 donations on the 19th and 20th of every month.

For perspective, that tops the number of donations that six rivals who made the debates collected in total through June.

Sanders’ fundraising is one of plodding consistency, as if a factory full of contributors were constantly churning out small donations. Since declaring, Sanders has had 54 days where he received more than 10,000 donations. Biden has had five such days. “Steady as they go,” said Faiz Shakir, Sanders’ campaign manager.

The most powerful motivator for Sanders supporters — beyond those who signed up to automatically give again and again — was often simply the calendar. After a decade of receiving breathless, deadline-oriented pleas for cash, Democratic donors are primed to give at the end of months and quarters. Sanders’ supporters responded like clockwork: There were 81,500 donations on the last day of the first quarter and 81,000 at the end of the second.

Sanders’ devotees also like stuff. Stickers sell like crazy, records show. On June 7, Sanders emailed supporters with a question: “Where can I send you a copy of my new book?” The special deal was to “donate ANYTHING,” as one email put it, and get a copy of “Where We Go From Here.” He raised nearly $400,000 that day — triple what he had been raising.

“Unlike a lot of the other candidates, Bernie’s support with small-dollar donors is consistent, and it is durable, and it is growing,” said Tim Tagaris, a senior Sanders adviser and the campaign’s top digital official.

The Sanders campaign said its recurring donations are worth nearly $1.2 million per month. Those contributions alone, in the second quarter, exceeded the total quarterly hauls of more than half the field.

APRIL 25

The day Joe Biden entered the race

His advisers were anxious, and they arrived early to the makeshift Washington headquarters. They simply did not know what kind of response to expect. As Obama’s running mate, Biden had access to the old email list from the Obama campaigns. Would those people give to Biden alone?

Within hours of Biden’s 6 a.m. announcement on April 25, money was pouring in.

He had 65,000 donations in 12 hours, en route to a $6.3 million haul in the first 24 hours — the biggest of any 2020 candidate. When Biden revealed his first full report in July, it appeared robust: $22 million raised, second most in the second quarter, in less time than his rivals.

But the day-by-day data show potential early warning signs.

His five best fundraising days all came in his first week. Perhaps more ominously, he was the only top-tier 2020 candidate in the field to report raising less money in June than in May, and he placed fifth in the June money race.

The numbers show how Biden, who kept a scarcer public schedule than most rivals and has not done televised town halls, generally struggled to generate new waves of donations, even if he had a higher baseline. On no day in May or June did he top 10,000 donations; his kickoff rally day had nearly 8,000.

One of his few appreciable bumps, beyond recurring donations, came when he and Trump campaigned in Iowa on the same June day, offering voters a glimpse of a potential general election matchup. Another spike came May 10, when Biden sent an email to supporters with the subject line “sorry.” (He was apologizing for having to ask for money.)

T. J. Ducklo, a Biden spokesman, said more than two-thirds of the campaign’s online donors were not on the initial list of supporters and that “widespread and enthusiastic support for Vice President Biden has resulted in a top-tier fundraising operation.”

Shakir, the Sanders campaign manager, argued Biden’s figures were “quite uninspiring.” “His case for defeating Donald Trump with a grassroots movement is not strong,” he said of Biden.

The case for the Sanders campaign to frame the race as between him and Biden is certainly clear. April 25 was one of Sanders’ best days of the year, too. He raised nearly $740,000 from 30,000 contributions after emailing supporters a two-word subject line: “Joe Biden.”

MARCH 10

The day of Pete Buttigieg’s star turn on CNN

Back in January, Anthony Mercurio, who leads Buttigieg’s fundraising operation, had set up alerts to buzz with every new donation. It was manageable. After all, Buttigieg was the virtually unknown mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and had started exploring a run with an email list of only 24,000.

Buttigieg’s first break came on Valentine’s Day, when he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” in his signature rolled up white shirt sleeves and blue tie, pitching a new generation of leadership. Donations leapt from less than 100 contributions per day to more than 1,600.

Then came Buttigieg’s CNN town hall on March 10. Mercurio’s phone exploded with “so many ActBlue notifications.” He turned them off that night.

In the 10 days leading up to the town hall, Buttigieg processed 8,900 contributions; the following 10 days, he had 80,000.

Of the 113 days after the town hall until June 30, Buttigieg raised at least $100,000 on all but seven of them. When Buttigieg formally announced his campaign in mid-April, he raised $4.2 million over four days, more than Harris’ four-day debate bounty.

Like Warren, Buttigieg’s liftoff came from capitalizing on not just one moment but a series of them. As momentum from his CNN performance faded a week or so later, a Twitter post about how Buttigieg spoke Norwegian went viral. Donations spiked, from 3,000 the day before to 7,000. The next day, he was on MSNBC for a segment that host Joe Scarborough said got the most overwhelming response he’d ever seen — other than for Obama. Donations climbed above 8,000 that day.

Soon, an Iowa poll showed him surging to third place and 11%.

Of course, money alone doesn’t win presidential primaries. Yet the view of the race that the data reveals — all the money the campaigns have taken in, except online store purchases and offline donations under $200 — shows how pivotal a role small donations are playing. They are a proxy for enthusiasm. And candidates must have at least 130,000 unique contributors to make future debate stages.

Andrew Yang, the former tech executive proposing the government give $1,000 per month to every American adult, will be in the September debate. He beat out senators, governors and the mayor of America’s largest city for a spot.

Yang might be a 2020 asterisk if not for a February interview he did with Joe Rogan, a popular podcast host, comedian and MMA commentator. The interview has 3.6 million YouTube views.

In the 30 days before the interview, Yang averaged 62 donations per day; in the 30 days after, it was about 2,150.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

The 5 Days That Reshaped the 2020 Primary

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