The Daily Background
| Shocker: Obama shatters fundraising record for January
by Arlen Parsa
Obama in Oakland, California last year
CHICAGO, IL– Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign today revealed that they had raised 32 million dollars in January alone– equaling his total haul in the 2nd Q of 2007, the three month period where he had previously raised the most.
By contrast, John Kerry only hauled in $7.6M in January 2004.
Today’s astonishing revelation means that Obama has raised more money in one month than Republican frontrunner John McCain raised for the entirety of 2007. The Clinton campaign isn’t disclosing how much cash they’ve raised in January, a probable indication that they haven’t done as well in the funding race.
Race will likely last past Feb 5th
This isn’t an indication of support he has (although the campaign scooped up about 170K new donors, giving the campaign roughly 650,000 donors total), it’s an indication that this race is far from over and that Obama won’t be conceding right after Super Tuesday even if he does worse than expected.
Because of the amount of cash he’s raising, he can afford to buy airtime in every state he needs to.
Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe told reporters in a conference call this AM that their strongest fundraising day of January was actually the day after the New Hampshire primary, where Obama narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton.
“We took a lot of encouragement from that because it showed the resolve of our existing donor base, but we also added a large amount of donors on that day,” Plouffe said.
“Obviously these resources are critical we’ve been able to advertise in just about every Feb. 5 state at pretty high levels,” Plouffe continued. He also said that the campaign was hitting the airwaves in the February 9th, 10th and 12th states, and that the campaign was looking ahead to March, should the contest last that long.
This means that states which have not historically had competitive primaries (such as Louisiana, Washington state, Nebraska, Maine, DC, Maryland and Virginia) may just be seeing them this year.
Chris Bowers of OpenLeft has previously noted that after Super Tuesday, February’s primary schedule is favorably stacked toward Obama.
[…] recently raised a record $32 million in the month of January alone, and his campaign is said to be preparing to compete well into March if […]