100,000 Donate Online to Obama Since Jan.1

Over the past couple of months, we've heard a lot about how well Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul has done when it comes to fundraising via the Internet. And it's no idle boost. Paul's online supporters helped him raise almost $20 million last quarter, most of it online.

But it looks like there might be a new champ in town. Or maybe he's just reclaiming his title.

TechPresident reports that in the past two weeks, the Barack Obama campaign (which has had a great track record online since Obama announced his candidacy last February) says it has raised money from more than 100,000 donors via the Internet. The report is based on an e-mail sent out by the Obama campaign Wednesday afternoon.

"After the New Hampshire primary last week, we set a goal of 100,000 online donors in 2008 - a goal we hoped to reach before the Nevada caucuses on Saturday. Last night we got there five days early. Think about that: 100,000 donors in 15 days."

As TechPresident notes, that is a huge number of supporters.

"A year into his campaign, Obama's raised money from about 500,000 donors, which averages to about 9600 new donors a week. But in the last two weeks alone he's averaged about 50,000 donors a week. That's darn impressive, and it looks like Barack Obama has displaced Ron Paul to become the online fundraising juggernaut of the campaign. Paul has raised money from a total of 14,000 donors since Dec. 31, and only 6,000 donors in the last two weeks"

But unlike Paul, Obama does not make his numbers available in real time, so there is no data on just how much money the Obama campaign raised from that number of donors.

And you can bet this news will get the Paul supporters fired up. They have another "money bomb" planned for this Monday. During the last one in December, around 59,00 people donated more than $6 million online to his campaign in one day.

6:15 PM ET | 01-17-2008 | permalink