The battle for money has started, and Republicans and Democrats are already working on their fundraising. In the last two months the Republican Party has collected more money than the Democrat Party, but November is still far away, so things could change during these new few months.

Fundraising is crucial to win an election and President Obama knows it; in the 2008 election, according to the Federal Election Commission, he raised $ 778,642,962. Meanwhile, his opponent John McCain raised $383,913,834.And the result is well known: Barack Obama became President of the United States.

The 2012 electoral campaign is telling  us a complete different story than the 2008 campaign. The Republican Party is raising considerable amounts of money. In June they broke their record, when they announced raising $106 million for Mitt Romney’s campaign and the Republican National Committee. Barack Obama’s campaign has just announced that they raised $71 million in June.

The Democratic Party has indeed faced difficulties in financing the Obama campaign. In May, Mitt Romney raised nearly $77 million, compared to Obama’s $60 million for the same month. It is a complicated scenario for the Democratic Party and if things continue there is a strong possibility the Republicans will end up raising close to one billion dollars for their presidential campaign.

The Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, recently said in an announcement: “If we don’t take this seriously now, we risk finding ourselves at a point where there is too much ground to make up.”

In a recent video, Jim Messina tried to encourage  people to donate. In the video he assured viewers that 1.3 million people have already donated and explained that during the last quarter they had more than 200,000 new donors. Another statistic he gave is that 98% of all donations were $250 or less and that the average donation was about $55. He also expressed that money is needed in order to build the kind of grass roots campaign that they will need in November.

The aim of this video is to prove the support the Democrats have nationwide and to demonstrate that their money comes from the people, who give little money but at the end it sums a lot, and that is were the Democrat Party strength comes from. Messina criticized the way the Republican Party is raising money and said that “last week, the Republican Party filed a court brief, asking the corporations be allowed to contribute directly to campaigns” to prove that, rather than the people, the Republican Party donors are the big corporations.

The Democratic Convention is near and they are looking for funds to host it, with their goal being $37 million. In the 2008 Convention they raised $61 million, but this time around they are having problems raising enough. This is unlike the Republicans, who do not seem to have any trouble  in raising their $55 million goal for their Convention in Tampa.

Image Courtesy of  Gage Skidmore

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About the author

Gerardo Jose Torres Montalvo
Student of Philosophy and Journalism in Universidad de Navarra, Spain. Interested in world politics, especially in Latin American issue and in political philosophy. I was born in the United States, but raised in El Salvador.

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