|
Campaign aides
said 93 percent of the donations were in amounts of $100 or
less, which they said was a sign of broad-based grassroots
support as Clinton fights off a challenge from the party's
liberal wing led by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
The fund-raising figure for July through September did not
include a breakdown of the total number of donors to Clinton,
the average donation, or how many donors have already given the
legal maximum for the primary campaign of $2,700.
Sanders raised more than $24 million in the last three months.
He has galvanized the party's left-leaning activists and taken
advantage of Clinton's declining opinion poll ratings on honesty
and trustworthiness to surge into contention.
The Clinton campaign released the preliminary fund-raising
numbers, watched closely as an early indicator of a candidate's
appeal and staying power, ahead of the Oct. 15 deadline for
filing an official report with the Federal Election Commission.
The campaign's fund-raising is only a portion of the donations
flooding the presidential race and do not include the money
raised by allied Super PACS. Those groups, which are legally not
supposed to work in concert with candidates but can advertise on
their behalf, report their fund-raising separately.
Clinton remains the front-runner for the Democratic nomination
in the November 2016 election, but she has struggled to shake
off lingering questions about her use of a private email server
while she was secretary of state.
Clinton has apologized for the email practice, but the
controversy has dented her support among Democrats and helped
bolster Sanders.
Clinton's troubles also have given rise to a possible late entry
into the Democratic race by Vice President Joe Biden, who says
he is evaluating whether he and his family have the energy and
commitment for a presidential race after the recent death of his
son Beau.
Clinton led the 2016 Democratic presidential pack in
fund-raising in the previous quarter, which ran from April
through June. Her campaign raised nearly $48 million and her top
allied Super PAC raised a further $15.6 million.
For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog,
“Tales from the Trail”
(http://blogs.reuters.com/talesfromthetrail/) .
(Reporting by John Whitesides and Eric Beech; Editing by Peter
Cooney)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
|
