EXCLUSIVE: House Republican campaign arm gains digital fundraising edge over Democrats for first time
Story on the Washington Examiner website here: EXCLUSIVE: House Republican campaign arm gains digital fundraising edge over Democrats for first time
House Republicans' campaign arm has outraised Democrats in digital fundraising so far this year, with a dramatic surge in revenue thanks to courting new online donors.
The National Republican Congressional Committee outraised its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, by $1.7 million in online fundraising in the first quarter for 2021, the first time this has ever occurred, according to fundraising data provided exclusively to the Washington Examiner.
The Republican committee says that the Democrats' huge advantage historically when it comes to digital fundraising "is no longer reality."
The Republican committee’s digital fundraising has grown over 184%, from just $4.4 million raised in the first quarter of 2019 to $12.5 million raised in the first quarter of this year.
The Democratic committee’s online fundraising, on the other hand, has increased only 6.6%, with $10.2 million raised in the first quarter of 2019, compared to $10.8 million raised in the first quarter of this year.
“The NRCC takes nothing for granted. We have prioritized our digital fundraising efforts and the results speak for themselves,” said NRCC spokesman Michael McAdams. “Meanwhile, House Democrats have taken their foot off the gas and squandered every advantage they had in the digital fundraising space.”
The improvement in digital fundraising is mostly thanks to the NRCC's efforts to build its digital fundraising operation online through email, text, and digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Verizon Media, to find new donors, the organization told the Washington Examiner.
“For ads (Google, Facebook, Verizon, etc.) the NRCC utilizes a variety of videos and still images on both petition and donation pages to acquire new leads,” the Republican committee said.
Over the past two years, the Republican committee has added hundreds of thousands of donors through the use of peer-to-peer texts and emails to identify new donors and convert them to donate to the NRCC through donation asks and petition polls, the committee said.
For most of the past decade, the Republican Party's big fundraising committees — the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the Republican National Committee — have been outraised handily by their Democratic counterparts. Thus far in the 2021 election cycle, though, the Republican House and Senate committees have the upper hand in fundraising when accounting for debt.
Republican donors have increased in size and given more due to the challenging position the GOP is in right now, going on the offense to try and retake its majority in the House and Senate, the NRCC said.
Furthermore, the Republican Committee gave credit to WinRed, an online fundraising technology used by conservative politicians and groups, as key to “evening the playing field” in the digital fundraising realm.
The NRCC said thanks to WinRed, Republicans are no longer fighting with “one arm tied behind their back” when trying to compete with ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising site, which has been remarkably effective and innovative as an online fundraising tool.
The Democratic committee defended its overall fundraising haul, highlighting how much it had raised in total from all donors, not just those online. The Democrats raised $34.1 million in total during the first quarter of this year, slightly more than Republicans' $33.7 million. However, the Democrats also have $5.5 million in debt to still pay off, while the GOP has no debt.
“The DCCC just wrapped the largest off-year fundraising quarter in our history, raising more than $34.1 million, powered by grassroots donors that know what’s at stake in this election," DCCC spokesman Chris Taylor told the Washington Examiner in an email.
"Democratic Frontliners ended the first quarter with $48.7 million cash on hand because our grassroots supporters know we can’t let QAnon conspiracy theorists like Marjorie Taylor Greene control Congress. Democrats just delivered critical relief to the American people through the American Rescue Plan which is crushing the COVID-19 pandemic with expanded access to vaccines, direct payments to struggling families, and resources to reopen schools and get people back to work," said Taylor.