Although Barack Obama’s poll numbers have remained somewhere between steady and stagnant — which is to say, he continues to trail Hillary Clinton nationally by something like 20 percentage points — the junior senator from Illinois is scoring well on the scale that may matter more right now: dollars.
Second-quarter fundraising figures are coming in, and — as expected — Obama has trumped Clinton for the second straight reporting period. Indeed, having taken in at least $32.5 million in contributions between April and June, Obama has beaten the single-quarter take of any Democrat who has ever made a run for the presidency.
Clinton raised approximately $27 million this quarter. While that’s a lot less than Obama’s $32.5 million, the way in which the campaigns are allocating their fundraising efforts probably says something about their respective levels of confidence: Of Obama’s $32.5 million, $31 million is aimed at winning the Democratic primary, with only $1.5 million held over for winning the general election. Of Clinton’s $27 million, only $21 million is earmarked for the primaries, with $6 million held over for the general.
Republican candidates haven’t started releasing their numbers yet. As for the other Democrats? So far, we know that John Edwards pulled in $9 million, Bill Richardson collected $7 million, Chris Dodd received $3.25 million and Al Gore got an advance copy of the final episode of “The Sopranos.”
