Sanders outpaces other 2020 Dems in Latino support
November 5, 2019Bernie Sanders is racking up more donations from Latinos than any other Democratic presidential candidate.
An independent analysis provided to POLITICO shows that the Vermont senator is out front in online contributions to his campaign from Latinos — a voting bloc that will be key in critical early-voting states like Nevada and California.
Between January and July of this year, Sanders brought in an estimated $4.7 million from Latinos through the online fundraising platform ActBlue, an amount that makes up 16 percent of his overall fundraising during that period on the site, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission donation data using Census data on Latino surnames occurring 100 times or more.
The report, conducted by Juan Proaño and Plus Three, analyzed 4.7 million contributions totaling $131.2 million during the first two quarters of the year. Proaño and Plus Three, a Latino-owned technology and fundraising firm that consults nonprofits and political organizations, produced the analysis independently of any presidential campaign.
The best estimate from the surname contributor list, Proaño and Plus Three said, is that Latinos contributed $13.54 million to Democratic presidential campaigns from January through June 30, accounting for 5.3 percent of overall donations to candidates. Latinos are on pace to contribute $100 million to Democratic presidential campaigns during the 2020 cycle, according to the report.
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who dropped out of the race last week, came in second among contributions from Latinos, followed by Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., in third at an estimated $1.3 million and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts in fourth at an estimated $1.1 million. Former Vice President Joe Biden came in seventh at $800,000 raised from Latinos, but did so in roughly half the time of his Democratic rivals as he entered the race in late April.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro brought in the fifth and sixth most contributions from Latinos. But the estimated fundraising totals determined that Sanders, Warren and Castro show the greatest ability to grow their donations from Latinos.
The report coincides with favorable polling for Sanders among Latino voters and appears to back up his campaign’s plan to aggressively court the Hispanic community.
A Univision survey released in September showed Sanders and Biden statistically tied with 20 percent and 22 percent, respectively, among Latino primary voters.
A poll put out on Monday of Nevada, the third state to hold a caucus or primary in 2020, found Biden in first place among Hispanics with 34 percent and Sanders in second with 25 percent. Warren is third with 12 percent.
Sanders is also viewed more favorably in Nevada by likely Democratic caucusgoers who are Hispanic (83 percent favorable, 10 percent unfavorable) and non-white (77-16) than those who are white (68-31), according to the survey.
An analysis by the Sanders campaign that was shared with POLITICO in early September found similar results to those from Proaño and Plus Three: The candidate’s team said at the time that he had received more than 170,000 contributions from 68,000-plus individual donors in the 100 U.S. counties with the largest percentage of Latino residents, according to ActBlue data.
That was nearly three times as many contributions as Castro and O’Rourke had brought in, combined, from those counties, many of which are in their home state of Texas, Sanders’ campaign said.
Sanders has devoted substantial time to reach Latino voters in Iowa, Nevada and California in recent months and is expected to heavily use the endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a freshman Latina lawmaker, on the trail. She is set to appear with Sanders in Iowa this week at three events, including a summit on climate change.
Sanders sent an email to his Iowa supporters on Monday urging them to vote for Chelsea Chism-Vargas, a Latina City Council candidate in Des Moines. Sanders’ campaign said its volunteers also knocked on doors for her over the weekend.
In an interview with POLITICO last month, Sanders said Latino voters were “enormously important” to his pathway to the nomination.
“We are seeing the Latino population growing very significantly,” he said. “We’re seeing young people getting involved in the political process in a very important way. The challenge that we face is that, historically, voter turnout in the Latino community is not very high. So we are doing everything we can in a variety of ways to organize.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/