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With five and a half months to go until the November election, former President Donald Trump enjoys the edge over President Biden in many national polls and surveys in the key battleground states that will likely decide their 2024 rematch.
And in April, for the first time, Trump also enjoyed the lead in monthly fundraising.
The president’s campaign announced on Monday evening that they and the Democratic National Committee and their joint fundraising committees hauled in over $51 million last month.
That’s significantly less than the $76 million that the former president, the Republican National Committee and their joint fundraising committees raised in April, according to an announcement earlier this month.
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Former President Donald Trump is joined by top GOP officials, allies, and potential 2024 running mates, as he speaks at a Republican National Committee donor retreat, on May 4, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida (2024 Donald Trump campaign )
“@TeamTrump and the RNC outraised Biden by $25 MILLION in April!” the RNC touted in a social media post.
The fundraising totals are a switch from March, when Biden and the DNC brought in roughly $90 million compared to $65.6 million for Trump and the RNC. The president’s March numbers were boosted by a large fundraiser at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall where Biden was joined by former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Biden had regularly been outpacing Trump in monthly fundraising, but Trump’s April haul was boosted by a record-setting $50.5 million that the former president’s campaign raked in at a single event early in the month with top dollar GOP donors that was hosted at the Palm Beach, Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson.
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The Biden campaign, in their announcement, spotlighted that they have hauled in $473 million in the year since the president formally launched his re-election bid.
They also showcased that they were sitting on a massive $192 million war chest as of the end of April.
They touted that Trump “trails badly in cash on hand” and that they have “the highest total of any Democratic candidate in history at this point in the cycle.”
Former Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and President Joe Biden. (Getty Images)
The Biden campaign also spotlighted their small dollar donations, saying that “a majority of April’s raise came from grassroots donors, and one million more supporters were added to our email list in the month alone.”
They also took aim at Trump, arguing that his campaign “has focused nearly entirely on courting billionaire donors, maxing out early in the cycle instead of building a durable grassroots fundraising program.”
In their announcement earlier this month, Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wilespointed to their grassroots fundraising prowess, saying that “with half of funds raised coming from small dollar donors, it is clear that our base is energized.”
And they pledged that “we are raising the resources necessary to deliver a victory in November.”
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon / Curtis Means/DailyMail.com via AP, Pool)
But the Biden campaign said that its fundraising advantage in recent months has allowed it to go up with major ad buys in the key states and to build formidable ground game teams in the battlegrounds.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said their fundraising “is giving us the resources necessary to invest in opening offices, hiring organizers and communicating across our battleground states in order to mobilize the coalition of voters who will decide this election.”
Presidential campaigns are required to file reports each month with the Federal Election Commission during an election year. But the joint fundraising committees, which the campaigns nowadays look to to raise much of their money, report quarterly, wtih the next reports to be filed in July.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
