WASHINGTON (JTA) — The popularity of Bernie Sanders appears to be holding up as he makes a second run for the presidency.
The Vermont senator raised $18 million from 525,000 donors in the first 41 days of his campaign, even better than the numbers from his previous bid.
His campaign announced the take on Tuesday. It said 99.5 percent of the donations were $100 or less — Sanders takes pride in running campaigns mostly based on small donors.
The strength of the numbers should put to rest the idea in some quarters about Sanders’ resiliency from his 2016 effort, when he mounted the only serious challenge to Hillary Clinton, who eventually won the Democratic nomination but lost the presidency to Donald Trump.
Sanders had raised $15 million in the first quarter of his 2016 run, when he became first Jewish candidate to win major-party nominating contests.
He is only the third of the 16 or so candidates running for the 2020 Democratic nomination to announce his first-quarter funding numbers.
The others to announce: Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., took in $12 million, and Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, brought in $7 million.
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