Donation buttons from ActBlue.com. Illustration by The New York Times
Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.
[Get On Politics delivered to your inbox.]There have been a lot of Democratic winners this election cycle. Many are historic firsts. More than two dozen are veterans. And more than 100 are women.
But all have at least one thing in common: ActBlue.
The online giving platform emerged as the piggy bank of the Democratic resistance in the 2018 midterms, funneling nearly $1.6 billion in contributions to Democratic candidates and causes. That’s more than an 80 percent increase over what it brought in four years ago.
And while ActBlue wasn’t the sole source of small-dollar donors for Democrats, it was certainly a powerful one: The candidates, committees and organizations who used the platform — more than 14,500 of them — paid credit card transaction fees and, in turn, got to outsource their financial collections to tested, easy-to-use software. (The group, a nonprofit, funds its staff of about 100 through donations.)
Republicans have long benefited from stronger support among wealthy donors and the business community, relying on a network of lavishly funded super PACs. But ActBlue has changed the game for Democrats. Founded in 2004, the nonprofit has developed into a trusted platform, turning the once-cumbersome process of donating to a campaign into something that can be done with just one click of a cellphone.
The technology encourages small, recurring donations that go directly to candidates, giving campaigns more control over how the money was spent. The money can also be transferred quickly, wired from ActBlue into campaign coffers by the next morning.
“There used to be these old ways of thinking that there was just a finite pool of people to reach out to when you were doing it all on paper,” said Erin Hill, the executive director of ActBlue. “Technology can help democratize this process in a way that wasn’t possible 20 years ago.”
Of course, money doesn’t guarantee success. Four of the five House candidates who received the most in small donations lost their elections, according to a New York Times analysis conducted in mid-October. (ActBlue doesn’t release the top recipients of donations.)
But strategists on both sides say the flood of small dollars — helped along by $110 million from the former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg — changed the race for Democrats in the final weeks of the election season, allowing the party to remain competitive in reach districts, dominate the airwaves and force Republicans to spread out their spending.
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