Obama’s 2008 run at the presidency was remarkable and game-changing, drawing huge crowds, raising huge sums in small money donations, and mobilizing a massive army of volunteer campaigners. There’d never been a campaign like it, and none had matched it since — until Bernie Sanders.
Sanders is drawing bigger crowds, mobilizing more volunteers, and raising more in small-money donations than the Obama 2008 campaign managed at this point in its life. More importantly: he’s polling stronger than Obama did in 2007.
At the end of September, the Sanders campaign announced it had hit one million donations — faster than any presidential campaign in history. This was a target the Obama campaign did not hit until February 2008 during his challenge to Hillary Clinton. Perhaps even more remarkable is that this milestone was achieved with an average contribution of $24.86; although the Obama campaign was quick to boast of its sizable number of small donors, less than half of his money, 47 percent, ended up coming from small donors.Obama managed an upset of frontrunner Hillary Clinton that few believed possible. But at that point in his initial campaign, he was polling well behind her. Real Clear Politics has a chart showing polling averages among major pollsters for that primary. In early October, Obama was at 22.6 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 48.2 percent.
Bernie Sanders Exceeds Obama’s Historic 2008 Run in Crowds, Donors and Polling
[Zaid Jilani/Alternet]
(Image: Bernie Sanders Hope Poster, $5.86 from Handsome Printables on Etsy)
(via Naked Capitalism)