Quarterly fundraising numbers for the Democratic and Republican National Committees released last month show both parties keeping pace with one another—each taking in $110 million through the end of August.
In practical terms, the GOP still has the advantage, according to Bloomberg. The RNC is sitting on $74.6 million cash on hand to the DNC's $67.8 million, mainly due to excess unspent funds from 2020. As Bloomberg detailed in its report on the funding, the GOP's "favorable cash balance comes from the windfall it enjoyed thanks to former President Donald Trump’s post-election fundraising, when he repeatedly and falsely cited widespread election fraud for his defeat, and asked for contributions to challenge the results in court."
The GOP has a slight advantage over the Democrats when you include the House and Senate fundraising arms of both parties, $269.7 million to $261.3 million. But that's a negligible difference in a record-breaking year.
These numbers point to what is increasingly seen as a hard-fought midterm election next year, when Democrats—who have little margin for error—intend to do their best to hold onto the House and Senate while Republicans work to pick off seats on the margins and flip the balances of power in either chamber, or even both.
Small-dollar donors will help determine how much cash Democrats have to work with. And for candidates, a steady flow of recurring, monthly donations can be a key advantage in mobilizing the resources to compete.
Pennsylvania Democratic Senate hopeful Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman is hoping to make that kind of cash flow work for him in 2022; he's taken money from over 300,000 small-dollar donors this cycle already. And in Texas, former Congressman Beto O'Rourke is eyeing the governor's mansion on the back of a formidable small-donor fundraising network. In 2019, O'Rourke raised $6.1 million the first 24 hours after announcing his presidential bid. Those kinds of numbers, while admittedly for two popular statewide Democrats in isolated elections, are a reminder that small donors have transformed the nature of campaign fundraising in recent years for Democratic politicians. According to Open Secrets, Senate Democrats more than doubled the share of money they raised from small donors in 2020 compared to 2016.
But the GOP is right behind them. Republican members of Congress have achieved even bigger gains in recent years in the share of money they raise from small donors, while nearly half of all the money that Trump raised in 2020 came from small donors.
The GOP is looking to capitalize on this momentum going into 2022. The Republican online fundraising program WinRed is cutting fees starting in January to ensure more cash gets directly to the party's candidates and is raising money aggressively off of the Biden administration's public health mandates.
Democrats need to look to their enemies for inspiration here. The party needs to ensure that affiliated fundraising companies like ActBlue have the lowest possible fees to avoid giving the other side even the slightest advantage. And Democrats need to take the opposite approach to mandates, which are broadly popular across the political spectrum and embrace the opportunity provided by contrasting responses to the pandemic by President Joe Biden and his predecessor to solicit donations. Democrats can also connect with small donors by focusing on abortion rights in the wake of the new Texas law and leveraging the congressional investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol to underscore the rising GOP threat to U.S. democracy.
In a year when donors are already involved and engaged, catalyzing sustained or increased giving by small donors who make recurring donations is a must for any winning fundraising strategy. Democrats can look at their $110 million so far this year with justifiable pride—but it's just a drop in the bucket compared to the money they'll need to compete in 2022.