Trump narrowly beats Biden in April fundraising haul

Yahoo Finance’s Kristin Myers joins Zack Guzman to break down the latest fundraising numbers from President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: We've been tracking the race to the White House here as the race for 2020 heats up. We've got new fundraising numbers, and it looks like former vice president Joe Biden is doing enough here to try and close the gap, though he still has quite a bit of ground to catch President Donald Trump. And for more on that, I want to get to Kristin Myers, who has the details. Kristin.

KRISTIN MYERS: Hey, Zack. So yeah, some of us here are still aware that an election is going on and will be taking place in November. We are in an election year. So despite the fact that April was really a tough one just financially, economically, and just in terms of health wise with the coronavirus, we are seeing both the Trump and Biden campaigns pulling in millions and millions of dollars.

So to start off with the Trump campaign and the RNC, they raised a combined $61.7 million. I want to be very clear here, however. That is just in one month. That's in the month of April. That's not total of the quarter. So that's a huge amount of money, over-- nearly almost to $100 million. Now they have a combined $255 million cash on hand, almost close to $300 million cash on hand.

And Trump himself, just in his campaign by the end of March-- we don't have by those end of April numbers yet for him. But by the end of March, he had roughly $100 million cash on hand, Zack, $98.5 million cash on hand.

Now I want to put this in context. When we talked a couple of months ago about Republican fundraising, Win Red-- that's a platform that the Republicans used to raise money online-- they had pulled in a combined $130 million for the entire quarter. So to raise almost $62 million in just one month, and again, amid coronavirus, is pretty staggering.

I want to read here just what Brad Parscale-- excuse me-- said about the haul. He said, quote, "Once again, the Trump campaign's colossal fundraising haul reaffirms that President Trump will lead an unstoppable juggernaut this November. While the do-nothing Democrats have recklessly held up funds for our nation's small businesses and play political games with the lives of the American people, President Trump's consistent record of unprecedented action is met with overwhelming enthusiasm and support."

I hate-- you know, I hate to say it, but he is absolutely right. Again, $62 million is absolutely incredible. But not to be outdone, Biden and the Democrats, the DNC pulled in $60.5 million dollars in April, so narrowing that gap, at least in terms of how much they were able to bring in, in the month of April.

We've seen, frankly, Biden's campaign really struggle when it came to those fundraising totals, particularly when we had Bernie Sanders in the race. He was, by and large, the best Democrat in raising money, but Joe Biden here bringing in 60 and a half million in April. Average donation size around $33, so you can only imagine just how many people are really putting their weight behind the Democrats as we head towards November.

Now here's the one problem that Joe Biden has when it comes to Trump. Cash on hand totals for him only $26.4 million. So I know you mentioned, Zack, at the beginning that they were trying to close that gap. Unfortunately, not when it comes to those cash on hand figures, which are really, really important in terms of advertising and marketing and just money that are going to be used to pay for the campaign in total.

Trump, frankly, is still killing the game. It does not matter if there is a pandemic going on or not. The people will support him. And they will continue to put their money behind him.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, we'll be tracking whether or not those fundraising numbers take a dent as we move further along, as more and more Americans file for unemployment. But Kristin Myers bringing us the update on the fundraising front there, much appreciated.