O’Rourke Raised More Than Sanders in First 24 Hours of Campaign

In the first 24 hours after announcing his campaign on Thursday, Beto O’Rourke raised US$6.1 million in donations, according to campaign officials. He has therefore narrowly outperformed Bernie Sanders, who raised US$5.9 million in the same time frame. Before O’Rourke and Sanders entered the race, Kamala Harris had announced the best initial fundraising results, with US$1.5 million in 24 hours. John Hickenlooper, Amy Klobuchar and Jay Inslee have all said they raised US$1 million within the first 48 hours of getting their campaign off the ground.

Other Democratic primary candidates have not disclosed these initial fundraising numbers. Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro are among those who haven’t done so, which might be connected to the fact that they have vowed to shun big donors and all PAC money during their campaigns.

Candidates can expect to be admitted to the first two primary debates if they are polling at at least 1 percent in three separate polls or have raised money from at least 65,000 individual donors which are geographically dispersed.