Online fundraising usually increases steadily as elections get closer. That’s not what happened to Republicans earlier this year.
The number of online donors to the Republican Party unexpectedly dropped in the first half of 2022, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data — one in a series of setbacks that have tempered expectations of a red wave in November.
Online fundraising usually ramps up dramatically and predictably over the course of an election cycle. But campaign finance data show that in the first half of this year, the number of people giving federal contributions to Republican candidates and committees through WinRed — the GOP’s widely used donation processing platform — fell to around 913,000 down from roughly 956,000 contributors during the six months prior.
The surprising dip illustrates broader fundraising difficulties that have plagued GOP candidates in key races across the country this summer, even amid hopes that the party could retake control of Congress. It reflects the party’s long-standing challenges in building donor lists to power its campaigns.
At the same time, the POLITICO review partially exonerates one perceived culprit of the party’s fundraising woes: former President Donald Trump. Though Trump is by far the GOP’s top online fundraiser, the data suggest he is not siphoning large numbers of donors from Republican candidates and committees doing battle in the midterms. Only 13 percent of Republican online donors this cycle gave solely to the former president’s new political group.
The drop in donor numbers means some people who had previously contributed to GOP candidates stopped giving, and Republicans did not recruit enough new donors to replace them. The dip coincided with a decline in total WinRed fundraising, as well as lower fundraising totals between the first and second quarters for key Republican groups.
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By contrast, the number of donors giving to Democrats through ActBlue, their preferred online donor platform, has increased over the course of the 2022 election cycle, from about 1.9 million who gave through ActBlue to federal committees in the last six months of 2021 to 2.5 million in the first half of 2022. Democratic campaigns have long outraised their Republican counterparts online, though Trump helped the GOP grow its online base ahead of the 2020 elections.
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The number of online donors to the Republican Party unexpectedly dropped in the first half of 2022, according to a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance data — one in a series of setbacks that have tempered expectations of a red wave in Novemberhttps://t.co/k4iGud1PcY
— POLITICO (@politico) September 8, 2022
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