Who will win the 2024 presidential election? The answer will have a lot to do with whoever wins over the digital, small-dollar donor. Democrats have long “ruled” the digital fundraising game, consistently outraising Republican Senate and House candidates by as much as three, four, or even five to one.
But in the weeks following his historic conviction, Donald Trump has been on a tear. If the guilty verdict was supposed to undo the Trump campaign, it did the exact opposite. Last month, the Trump campaign raised a whopping $141 million—much of it coming in the final two days of the month. Trump’s team raised nearly $53 million in just 24 hours after the verdict was announced.
The campaign capitalized on breaking news to bring donors new and old (back) into the fold. An associated pro-Trump super PAC took in a separate $70 million. For perspective, Biden and the DNC raised some $51 million in April.
And Trump has carried the momentum into June. First came a $12 million haul at a technology fundraiser in liberal San Francisco. Millions more came in Southern California two days later, with Trump also collecting $6 million for outside groups supporting his effort. Across the pond, the story is the same: Millions and millions of dollars more. The Trump machine is exceeding fundraising goals by the week, while Democrats struggle to generate excitement, with some even calling it a full-blown “freakout” over Biden.
But it’s important to pinpoint the nature of Trump’s burgeoning support. While glitzy fundraisers at Newport Beach mansions—where attendance alone costs six-figures—may garner the headlines, the Trump phenomenon has always been about small-dollar support. Back in 2016, Trump shattered Republican records for small-dollar donations, soliciting $5, $10, and $20 at a time to swing the election. In 2020, small-dollar donations swung Biden’s way, although the Trump campaign continued to resonate with sub-$200 donors.
Four years later, Trump’s support rides on the small-dollar donor, and the digital one at that. After Trump’s guilty verdict in late May, the campaign nearly doubled its single-day fundraising record, collecting almost $35 million from small-dollar donors in under seven hours. Nearly 30 percent of those donors were entirely new to the Republican online processor WinRed. Digital donations were so popular that they created temporary online delays due to high traffic.
This should be the blueprint for a Trump win in 2024—and down-ballot Republican campaigns too. In fact, Trump’s fundraising boost has also benefited conservative candidates and national committees across the board. It seems like anyone who received fundraising solicitations in late May benefited from conservative donors’ activism following the verdict. Not only are right-leaning donors motivated to help put Trump in the White House come 2025, but they also want to win back a Senate majority while adding to the razor-thin margin in the House.
Small dollars drove the 2020 election in Biden’s favor, with donations under $200 amounting to the single largest source of funding for the two presidential candidates. While buzzwords like “mega-donors” and “dark money” are often thrown around, small donations account for more than twice as much money as PACs and other political committees.
Of course, mega-donors are still important. Super PACs can indeed help presidential candidates win the White House, but they should not form the foundation of an election bid. The campaign that best understands the digital fundraising landscape will win.
Everything changed in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic forced campaigns to expand their digital programs, adapting once in-person events were no longer feasible. The lost income made digital fundraising more important than ever.
Case in point: Digital ad spending alone is now estimated to increase by 30 percent in 2024. If you’re not thriving digitally, you’re not surviving.
In the early 2000s, presidential campaigns experimented with websites and email donations on a tiny scale, but digital fundraising was seen as the “icing on top” of the traditional cake. Today, the Trump campaign is a small-dollar machine, using online momentum to break records. If the Biden campaign hopes to compete, it must find new ways to generate the excitement that attracts a $10 donation here and a $20 contribution there.
Many political observers—journalists, pundits, and others—tend to fixate on what grabs headlines. Raising money from real estate tycoons or launching a super PAC ad blitz makes for a juicier story, but it’s not the bread-and-butter of presidential campaigning in 2024. The foundation of a winning campaign is winning over the Detroit factory worker, the middle-class restaurant owner, and the suburban mom, persuading them to donate digitally—especially if it’s just $5.
Maggie Paulin serves as Vice President of Client Services at Push Digital Group.
