Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hit the ground running in his 2020 presidential campaign, collecting $5,925,771 in the first 24 of his bid’s hours thanks to 223,047 individual donors, according to a statement released by the campaign. As tweeted by The Daily Beast’s Gideon Resnick, the Sanders camp received $600,000 in donations that will recur monthly. His previous single-day fundraising record in 2016 was $6.5 million in donations following his New Hampshire primary win, the Washington Post reports. Tuesday’s total shatters the previous opening day record.
Earlier on Tuesday afternoon, CNN’s Ryan Nobles reported that Sanders officially announced his run, that the left-leaning candidate raised $3.3 million from 120,000 individual donors.
That number blows Kamala Harris, one of the most active Democratic fundraisers so far, out of the water. The California Senator racked up $1.5 million from over 38,000 individual donors in her first 24 hours, The Daily Beast reports.
The swift grassroots success of Sanders’ financial campaign heralds a new era for the Vermont senator, whose ideas won over a sizable sector of the public in 2016, but did not have the immediate name recognition to garner him the Democratic nomination. Paste’s Shane Ryan may just be right—Sanders could wind up on the Democratic ticket and make it look easy.