Four years ago, at the end of May 2020, I had raised a total of just over $303,000 for Democrats up & down the ballot, broken out as follows;
- U.S. Senate: $183,686 (61%)
- U.S. House: $87,460 (29%)
- State Legislature: $29,560 (10%)
- POTUS: $1,537 (0.5%)
- State Execs (Gov/AG/SoS): $942 (0.3%)
- State Supreme Court: n/a (0%)
- Other: n/a (0%)
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TOTAL: $303,185
So how am I doing as of the end of May this cycle by comparison?
- U.S. Senate: $174,825 (31%)
- U.S. House Seats: $115,779 (20%)
- State Legislature: $230,214 (40%)
- POTUS: $5,871 (1.0%)
- State Execs (Gov/AG/SoS): $21,467 (3.7%)
- State Supreme Court: $8,816 (1.5%)
- Other:$16,684 (2.9%)
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TOTAL: $573,657
So far I've raised 89% more than at the same point four years ago...but the breakout is dramatically different. Here's what it looks like side by side (I've scaled the 2024 chart up to reflect the overall increase):
As you can see, while 2020 was all about retaking the U.S. Senate, this time around I'm putting a much greater emphasis on STATE LEGISLATURES, which also includes State Democratic Parties as well as State House/Senate Democratic Caucuses.
In addition, I've started raising money for State Supreme Court races this cycle.
Finally, the "Other" category includes fundraising for Voters of Tomorrow Action as well as the Reproductive Rights Ballot Proposals in Florida, Arizona and Montana.
Here's what it looks like another way:
My U.S. Senate fundraising continues to lag slightly behind the same point in 2020, although it's only down 5% vs. 7% in April. I'll discuss the Senate numbers more below.
U.S. House fundraising is a different story, however: That's up 32% vs. the same point four years ago: $116K vs. $87.5K.
The most dramatic difference is the MASSIVE in state legislative race donations--up 7.8x as much so far vs the same point last cycle! This ratio has actually increased since April.
My fundraising is also dramatically higher this cycle for the remaining categories (President, State Executives, State Supreme Court & Other), although that's a bit misleading since I wasn't really pushing the former two categories and didn't even include the latter two.
Taking a closer look at the U.S. Senate number: While it's down a bit overall, it's important to break this out between competitive races and long shot seats.
In 2020, there were a dozen Senate races which were generally considered up for grabs: AZ, CO, GA (x2), IA, ME, MI, MN, MT, NH, NM & NC.
There were another 16 Republican-held seats which were basically unflippable by Dems, but which I listed on the fundraising page in order to encourage party building and other reasons.
This year there's 10 Senate seats I consider competitive (or at least potentially competitive): AZ, FL, MD, MI, MT, NV, OH, PA, TX & WI. Florida and Texas are reaches but still in the "competitive" category. Note that now that Andy Kim is pretty much guaranteed to be the nominee, I've dropped New Jersey from the page, though the money I've already raised for him is still included here; the same is true of Tim Kaine in Virginia, who I had included briefly last year.
There's another nine GOP seats which are likely pipe dreams but again, you never know: IN, MS, MO, NE Special, ND, TN, UT, WV & WY. This was previously ten, but I've dropped the Full-Term Nebraska race due to a public falling out between the state Democratic Party and Independent candidate Dan Osborn (he may be added back again later this summer).
Thru May 2020, Senate donations were split nearly evenly between the two (54% / 46%).
THIS cycle, however, 79% of the Senate funds I've raised have gone to one of the competitive races, with just 21% going to the other ten long shots combined.
As a result, while my total Senate fundraising is down 5%, for COMPETITIVE Senate seats it's actually UP 40%!
Here's what the fundraising project has looked like over time for both cycles. The orange line is how much I actually raised (total) during the 2020 cycle. The black line is how much I've actually raised to date for the 2024 cycle.
So far I've raised a stunning 89% more than the same point four years ago!
Obviously this may not last, but only time will tell. In the meantime, I'm currently on track to reach perhaps $750,000 by the end of June.
Finally, let's look at my ongoing Social Media Platform Engagement experiment.
Back in November 2023, I started including referral codes with the ActBlue fundraising links I posted across various social media platforms. this allowed me to start tracking how many people were clicking the links I posted via Twitter, Threads, Mastodon and so on.
I also started tracking how many followers I had on each platform, since those increase or decrease over time, so I could start tracking click-thrus per follower, which is necessary for an apples to apples comparison; obviously getting more visitors through Twitter doesn't mean much if I have 50 times as many followers on that platform than on another one.
The table below show how each platform compared in May.
As usual, each of the other five platforms dramatically outperformed Twitter on a per follower basis, ranging from 11% higher for the (now defunct) Post to more than 6x higher for Blue Sky.
I also continued to gain a small number of followers on the other 5 platforms in May (+119 across all five), while gaining over 600 on Twitter thanks to a viral thread I posted debunking Donald Trump's lies about his Bronx rally crowd size.
My personal follower count changes have nothing to do with the fundraising project, but if I'm gonna track social media click-thru rates I might as well track this as well.
