Memos show massive jump in contributions and volunteers for Kamala Harris campaign, in addition to $200m haul
With less than 100 days to go in the election cycle, the launch of Kamala Harris’s campaign has injected newfound energy into her party, raising Democrats’ hopes of winning battleground states that once seemed irretrievably lost to Donald Trump.
According to a set of memos exclusively shared with the Guardian, Democratic parties in battleground states saw a dramatic surge in contributions and volunteer sign-ups in the past week, in addition to the Harris campaign’s record-breaking fundraising haul of $200m.
The memos, which were shared by the coordinated campaign between Harris for President and the Democratic National Committee, offer some promising signs for the vice-president. In Georgia, where Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by just 12,000 votes or 0.2 points in 2020, more than 1,000 new volunteers signed up in the 24 hours after Harris announced her candidacy, marking the largest single-day total of the campaign. Georgia Democrats also collected $200,000, as donations to the state party increased by 320% compared with the week before.
Asking as a person outside the US, has it ever happened that the incumbent didn’t win the primary?
American primaries almost never run the whole course.
A handful of states vote and then almost everyone drops out.
Like someone else said, LBJ dropped as an incumbent.
There’s this weird belief where any kind of primary weakens the incumbent, but that’s because it’s rare for an incumbent to face a serious primary. Only the weakest incumbents do, but avoiding the primary doesn’t magically make a candidate better. It just removes the option to abandon ship before it sinks.
LBJ dropped out after a few states into primaries for 1968.