Democrats See Record-Breaking Fundraising in the Aftermath of Justice Ginsberg’s Death
As news of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death spread on the evening of September 18, Democrats witnessed a record-breaking wave of small-dollar donations that has the potential to reshape the 2020 election. ActBlue, a Democratic donations website that provides a centralized donations platform for “Democratic candidates up and down the ballot,” saw a massive influx in small-donor contributions over the weekend following Justice Ginsberg’s death, likely reframing the presidential and senatorial elections.
In the first hour after the announcement of the Justice’s death, ActBlue processed 6.2 million dollars in donation, the most money that they have ever raised in an hour since the site’s founding in 2004, smashing the previous record of 4 million dollars set during Vice President Biden’s acceptance of the Democratic presidential nomination. In the hour between 10:00pm and 11:00pm ET, donors broke the record once again, donating 6.3 million dollars, or over 100,000 dollars per minute.
As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-K.Y.) announced his intentions to bring a Supreme Court nominee to a vote before Election Day, fundraising continued at breakneck speed, averaging 1 million dollars every fifteen minutes for much of Saturday. By 10:00am on Sunday, September 20, ActBlue tweeted that donors had contributed more than 100 million dollars to Democratic candidates and organizations. To put this figure into context, donors gave 485 million dollars on ActBlue during the entire month of August, a figure which itself had already broken the donation site’s records on total dollars raised and number of contributions.
In a statement, ActBlue Executive Director Erin Hill said that the “record-breaking response we've seen from small-dollar donors shows that the left is eager to fulfill [Justice Ginsberg’s] final wish and ready to fight back against Trump and McConnell’s vow to push through a Supreme Court nominee.” WinRed, a similar platform used by the Republican Party and President Trump’s re-election campaign, did not release fundraising numbers over the weekend and its spokesperson declined to comment.
Donors can give to a multitude of candidates and organizations on the site, and, until the filing of campaign fundraising reports in October, one can only suppose as to which groups and campaigns benefited the most from this flood of donations. However, much of the influx appears to be going towards Democrats running for Senate seats. “Get Mitch or Die Trying,” a website run by hosts of the podcast Pod Save America and that splits donations between 14 Senate candidates, received more than $10 million in donations over the weekend.
The record-breaking fundraising highlights the potential for a looming Supreme Court confirmation process to motivate Democrats, many of whom revered Justice Ginsberg. However, it also showcases the accelerating power of small-dollar donations in American politics.
ActBlue processed $58 million in donations in September 2016. Then-candidate Trump raised 239 million dollars in small-dollar donations in 2016, and Hillary Clinton raised 137 million dollars. Since President Trump’s election, however, small-dollar donations have soared. In 2020 alone, President Trump raised over 265 million dollars, much of which came from small-dollar donations, while well-known Democratic candidates like Amy McGrath, the challenger to Mitch McConnell in November, raised more than 46 million dollars as of June 2020, an unprecedented campaign war chest for a Senate race.