Donor maps show just how widespread Sanders' support is

Bernie Sanders has raised more money than anyone else standing for the Democratic nomination; more importantly, he's raised that money from more people than anyone else in the race, and even more importantly, he's raised that money from more people in swing states that the Democrats will have to flip or hold in order to take the presidency in 2020.

Sanders' lead is, in the words of the New York Times, "huge." Sanders' lead is to massive that the only way to visualize the other candidates' fundraising is to produce sub-maps that exclude Sanders' fundraising. Otherwise, his lead renders their efforts to date effectively invisible.

The Times spins Sanders' small-money support as a deficit, noting that the average Sanders donor puts in $46, unlike the average of $80 for Biden and Harris. Sanders has raised $36m from 746,000 donors -- a commanding lead over the second-place Elizabeth Warren campaign, which has raised $25m from 421,000 donors.

The data comes from the Democratic party fundraising system Actblue, and is current as of June 2019.

I am a donor to both the Sanders and Warren campaign.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a huge lead over other Democratic presidential candidates in the number of individual donors they have each accumulated so far.

This is the first time since the primary race began in earnest that we can estimate how many individual donors each candidate has attracted - a key indicator of how much they are catching on with voters.

Mr. Sanders is relying heavily on small donors to power his campaign, and he entered the 2020 race with a huge network of online donors who supported his 2016 presidential bid. The map above shows the breadth of Mr. Sanders's roster of donors across the United States.

Detailed Maps of the Donors Powering the 2020 Democratic Campaigns [Josh Katz, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Rachel Shorey and Thomas Kaplan/New York Times]

(via Jacobin)