Oct 13, 2020
WinRed, the donation-processing digital platform created last year to help Republicans catch up with Democrats’ online fund-raising, announced this week that it had passed the $1 billion mark in only 15 months.
The for-profit site, founded by Republican strategists, processed $623.5 million in the third quarter of 2020. Its Democratic counterpart, the nonprofit platform ActBlue, which was launched in 2004, processed about $1.5 billion in that time frame.
Gerrit Lansing, the president of WinRed, wrote in a memo that Republicans were closing the gap on the Democrats’ online fund-raising advantage: “A critical problem grew continuously for 15 years, reshaping how politics was financed — and a solution had previously proven elusive.”
On its single biggest day, Sept. 30, WinRed raised $24.8 million. ActBlue did not hit that mark until this June, 15 years into its existence. (On Sept. 30, ActBlue processed more than $65 million.)
For four consecutive quarters, WinRed has doubled or nearly doubled the amount raised in its previous quarter — an enormous rate of growth that has been driven mostly by President Trump and the Republican Party using the platform. It has raised $1.2 billion in total.
Mr. Trump cheered the site’s success on Tuesday in a tweet.
The site did not break down how much various candidates and campaigns raised last quarter but will be required to do so in filings later this week with the Federal Election Commission.
Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro Desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign.