Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders raised more than $33m in the last three months of 2015 from 2.5m individual donations, his campaign said Saturday. That breaks the record for small donations for a candidate, which was held by Barack Obama’s fourth quarter re-election fundraising in 2011, when 2.2m donations poured in.
The fundraising pushes Sanders’s year-end total donations to more than $73m from more than one million people, just one month before the first caucus in Iowa.
“This people-powered campaign is revolutionizing American politics,” Jeff Weaver, Sanders’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “What we are showing is that we can run a strong, national campaign without a Super Pac and without depending on millionaires and billionaires for their support. We are making history and we are proud of it.”
When Sanders launched his presidential bid, he refused to start a Super Pac, a choice that once made him a dark-horse candidate. But in the last year, Sanders has steadily gained on Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, and in December polled between 16 and 21 points behind the former secretary of state.
The average donation to the Sanders campaign in the last three months was $27, which means Sanders can tap supporters again, as the campaign said only a few hundred have reached the donation limit. Traditional campaign finance laws limit campaign donations to $2,700, but Super Pacs allow candidates to raise unlimited funds.