Half a million people have already donated to Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has already raised $18.2 million from over half a million people, his presidential campaign announced on Tuesday.

Sanders, who is ahead of the two other 2020 Democrats who have announced how much money they've raised during the first quarter of 2019, received about 900,000 contributions from 525,000 individual donors, HuffPost reports. The campaign says 99.5 percent of the donations were $100 or less, per CBS News, with the average being about $20. Sanders raised $15 million in the first quarter of his 2016 presidential run, and his campaign says it took 146 days to reach this many donations last time, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Sanders' campaign did not quite reach 1 million individual donations as it hoped, but campaign manager Faiz Shakir said it "was important for us to set an ambitious goal," per The Washington Post.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For comparison, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) announced she had raised $12 million in the first quarter, having received 218,000 contributions. The average donation was about $55, her campaign said. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) previously said his presidential campaign had raised more than $7 million, with about 158,000 donors contributing an average of $35.

Sanders said he raised $5.9 million in the first 24 hours of his campaign, a record that was later broken by former congressman Beto O'Rourke, who announced he raised $6.1 million in the first day of his campaign. O'Rourke has not yet announced how much he raised during the first quarter of 2019, although we'll know soon, as the deadline is April 15.