Bernie Sanders raised massive $46.5 million in February, campaign announces

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced Sunday that his campaign raised $46.5 million in the month of February, shattering his previous record for the most raised in one month.

The $46.5 million haul from February, which is a substantial addition to the Vermont senator’s already formidable war chest, almost doubles the $25 million the campaign raised in the month of January. The announcement comes at a time when the campaign is looking to Super Tuesday and beyond, following a loss to former Vice President Joe Biden in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary.

Biden told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that his campaign raised upwards of $17 million for the month of February. A Biden campaign official confirmed Sunday that the former vice president raised $5 million online within 24 hours, the biggest online fundraising day to date for the campaign.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign announced it raised $29 million in February. Campaign manager Roger Lau declared Sunday that the Warren campaign is ready to “compete in every state and territory and ultimately prevail at the national convention in Milwaukee.”

The Sanders campaign’s massive February fundraising total came from more than 2.2 million donations, including contributions from more than 350,000 people who donated to the Sanders campaign for the first time. The last day of February proved to be the best fundraising day since the launch of the campaign, raising $4.5 million in one day, according to the campaign.

“The senator’s multigenerational, multiracial working class coalition keeps fueling his campaign for transformational change a few bucks at a time,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement. “We’re especially proud that of the more than 2 million donations we received this month, over 1.4 million were from voters in states that vote on Super Tuesday.”

Later Sunday, Sanders told ABC’s George Stephanopolous that he can bring factions of Democrats together, calling himself “an existential threat to the corporate wing of the Democratic Party.”

“For too long, the Democratic Party and leaders have been going to rich people’s homes, raising money, and they’ve ignored the working class and the middle class and low-income people in this country. That has got to change,” the Vermont senator said.

Donors to the Sanders campaign in February most commonly identified their occupation as “teacher,” and the five most common employers were Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the United States Postal Service and Target. The average donation was $21, which is higher than the $18.72 average in January.

Sanders has consistently weaved Super Tuesday states into his early state travel, cross-crossing the country in an effort to make his case to a wider audience. Sanders is currently on air in 12 out of the 14 states voting on Tuesday.

The campaign also announced Sunday that part of the funds acquired in February will be put toward television buys in nine states that hold primaries in later March. Sanders will soon appear on television in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Washington, which all hold contests on March 10, and Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio, which hold contests on March 17.

Sanders has now surpassed the total number of individual contributions received by his 2016 campaign, topping 8.7 million donations since February 2019. At this point, more than 1.9 million people have donated to the campaign and more than 99.9% of donors have not maxed out and can donate to the campaign again.

Since the campaign’s February 2019 launch, Sanders has raised more than $167 million. The total for the campaign does not include an additional $12.7 million in transfers all made in 2019 from Sanders’ other federal accounts.

This story has been updated to include additional comments by Sen. Bernie Sanders Sunday.