Barack Obama Raised $70 Million Over the Summer
On Thursday morning, President Obama's campaign announced that it had "raised more than $70 million combined for his re-election and the Democratic party" in the quarter that ended in September according to an emailed statement reported by the Associated Press. It looks like the campaign did a pretty good job at the playing the expectations game too: last month, the AP reported that top aides told top donors to expect a three month haul that would total a combined $55 million. So, he beat the expectations established by his own metric, but as the AP notes, the total is about $16 million less than what he brought in for his campaign and the DNC in the second quarter. Other details, via the AP:
Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in an e-mail to supporters that more than 600,000 people donated to the campaign in the most recent quarter, more than the previous three months. He said more than 980,000 people have given money to the campaign, and in the most recent quarter, 98 percent of the donors gave $250 or less, with an average donation of $56. ... The numbers include $42.8 million for Obama's campaign and $27.3 million for the Democratic National Committee, which will help Obama's re-election effort next year.
As Politico's Alexander Burns notes, the huge haul "sets up the president to outraise by far the whole GOP field, combined, in back to back fundraising periods." Obama's campaign did just that earlier this year when it reported an $86 million combined total.
