The gender gap is real, even among donors

Oct 22, 2024

By Jessica Piper, Brakkton Booker and Jesse Naranjo

What up, Recast fam. On today’s agenda:

Political data reporter Jessica Piper on who’s donating to Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s campaigns
The Black male celebrities hyping up Trump’s masculinity politics
Harris visits Texas to discuss the threat of abortion bans

Photo illustration of torn-paper edge on image of woman dancing at rally with "Madam President" T-shirt.

Harris supporters wait for the vice president to speak at a campaign rally Aug. 20 in Milwaukee. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP

Money is a huge storyline in these final 14 days of the election cycle. And Kamala Harris’ and Donald Trump’s latest fundraising numbers tell us a lot about who is supporting their campaigns and what resources are available for each of them at this stage.

We dove into the latest release of campaign finance data from the Federal Election Commission to understand how Harris and Trump are attracting a different identity makeup of donors — and who is funding efforts to reach voters of color down the stretch.

Here are three of the most interesting takeaways.

1. The gender gap between Harris and Trump is wide. Their donors reflect that, too.

Online donations provide the most comprehensive look at who is supporting each campaign because they itemize even small-dollar supporters. And new reports from ActBlue and WinRed suggest another way of looking at the massive gender gap that has emerged between Harris and Trump.

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Among ActBlue donors giving to Harris’ campaign or joint fundraising committees, nearly 3 in 5 whose gender could be identified were women, POLITICO’s analysis found. By contrast, a slight majority of Trump’s donors on WinRed in the third quarter were men.

Notably, Harris’ strength with female donors seems less about her own gender and more about partisan polarization. President Joe Biden saw a similar share of his online donations coming from women before he ended his reelection bid.

A quick caveat though: For both candidates, gender wasn’t identifiable for about 10 percent of donors, based on POLITICO’s methodology, which assigns the probability that someone is male or female based on their first name and historical Social Security data.

2. There was a massive surge of South Asian donors after Harris took over the Democratic campaign.

If Harris wins, she would be the country’s first South Asian American president. And that seems to be monetarily mobilizing the community.

Mindy Kaling stands with hands outstretched at a dais.

Indian American actor Mindy Kaling takes part in a stage test on the third day of the Democratic National Convention, Aug. 21 in Chicago. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

New small dollar donor data shows her campaign received a particular spike in donations from South Asian donors this fall, POLITICO’s analysis found. Among donors with the 20 most common South Asian surnames (identified based on census data and academic research), the vice president had more than five times as many donors from her campaign launch through the end of September as Biden did in the three months before he dropped out.

That’s an even greater rate of increase than Harris’ overall donor surge. South Asian donors were also far more likely to have given to Harris than Trump over the last quarter — the vice president had seven times as many online donors with common South Asian last names as Trump, while having a little more than three times as many donors overall.

3. In September, Dems started putting their money where their mouth is with Black and Latino outreach.

Two Democratic-affiliated PACs targeting Black and Latino voters got big funding boosts to expand outreach in September, with most of the funds coming from other groups within the Democratic ecosystem.

Kamala Harris waves on a stage in front of Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute logos.

Harris speaks at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute leadership conference Sept. 18 in Washington. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP

SOMOS PAC, which had raised just $4.4 million all cycle through August, brought in $9.7 million in September. That includes $3.5 million from the Harris-backing FF PAC, nearly $2.3 million from the nonprofit Forward Action Fund and $1.9 million from the organization MAP USA, which shares an address with the building trades union 501(c)(4) group Rebuild USA.

SOMOS turned around that money quickly, spending more than $4.5 million on canvassing and another $5.2 million on TV, radio and digital ads in September to boost Harris and an array of Democratic House and Senate candidates.

BlackPAC, which had previously raised just $7.6 million this cycle, got $8.8 million in September alone, with 85 percent of those funds coming from the George Soros-backed Democracy PAC. The group spent $6 million on canvassing to boost Harris in September.

IT’S RAINING MEN

Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell leave the stage at a Trump rally.

Former Pittsburgh Steelers players Antonio Brown (foreground) and Le'Veon Bell leave the stage after speaking at a Trump rally Saturday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump rolled out a slew of new endorsements from retired Black athletes and rappers this past weekend — a shrewd play to lean even further into masculinity politics and lure Black male voters to break for him on Election Day.

New surrogates include Detroit rapper Trick Trick, 51, and boxing legend Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns, 66, who grew up in the Motor City and whose last professional bout was in 2006. They both joined Trump on stage at his most recent rally in Detroit.

In Pennsylvania, Trump revealed he also had pro boxer and former running back Le’Veon Bell behind him. However, the crown jewel of Trump’s latest batch of endorsers is the polarizing retired wide receiver Antonio Brown.

“You know, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz … want to put tampons in the boys bathroom,” Brown said at a Trump campaign rally in Latrobe, a city roughly 75 minutes east from where he and Bell became NFL standouts with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

“By the way, Tampon Tim Walz, he isn't a real football coach. He could never guard me,” Brown continued, before adding that the country will “achieve greatness” with Trump once again leading it.

Brown, whose checkered past includes a sexual assault settlement with an ex-trainer and accusations that he exposed himself at a public pool in Dubai , would be a problematic ally for most presidential candidates. Not Trump though: Brown is exactly the type of surrogate the former president believes will endear him to the slice of the Black electorate who despises Harris’ candidacy.

“Giving Black men a voice is a priority of ours, and we’re proud to welcome new faces to the MAGA movement as a big-tent party, ready to deliver real results for everyone,” said Janiyah Thomas, the Trump campaign’s Black media director, in a statement.

Both Bell and Brown were reportedly passing out yellow and black "Trump-Vance" towels to fans ahead of the team’s tilt against the New York Jets on Sunday. (Yes, those are the Steelers’ colors.) And Bell has been leaning into misogynistic tropes — again, hyping Trump’s masculinity politics — by rocking a T-shirt that read “Trump or the Tramp.”

But the Harris campaign wasn’t going to be caught lacking: It countered with their own endorsements from Steelers legends Jerome “The Bus” Bettis, “Mean” Joe Greene and the family of NFL Hall of Famer Franco Harris, who died in 2022.

The Trump campaign is doing some actual legwork in cities like Philadelphia. Over the weekend another surrogate, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), visited a barbershop in the city to engage with Black voters. But it seems Democrats are most vexed by the overt masculinity play.

Harris supporter and pro wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista recently cut a video for Jimmy Kimmel’s late night program calling Trump weak, a tantrum-throwing child and someone who wears more makeup than Dolly Parton.

What did Trump do? He simply posted to his TikTok account a video of him sitting in between WWE legends Kane and The Undertaker.

Buckle up, folks. The sprint to Nov. 5 is getting more bizarre by the day.