Sanders hits 2 million campaign contributions

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has received two million donations, more than any non-incumbent candidate in history, his campaign said Thursday.

The Sanders campaign released a web and television ad on Thursday touting the haul, in which the Vermont senator notes that he accomplished the feat without the help of a super-PAC.

“Over 2 million contributions have been made to the only campaign that rejects a corrupt campaign finance system,” Sanders says in the ad. “You can’t level the playing field with Wall Street banks and billionaires by taking their money.”

{mosads}In the third quarter, the Sanders campaign took in $26 million, nearly matching Hillary Clinton’s $28 million haul.

The campaign did not say how much it has raised so far in the fourth quarter, but said it has pulled in more than $3 million so far this week amid a push to hit the 2 million donations mark.

More than half of that has come in since Wednesday alone, the campaign said.

Sanders has lost some of the momentum he had earlier in the cycle and appears to have hit a plateau in the polls.

Clinton has a huge lead nationally over Sanders and has maintained a steady double-digit lead over him in Iowa. Sanders has a narrow lead over Clinton in New Hampshire.

But the Sanders campaign argues that it still has considerable grassroots support, pointing to its high percentage of small-dollar donations.

The contributions that came in this week averaged $20 apiece, the campaign said, and overall only 1.7 percent of Sanders’s donors have given the maximum contribution, compared to more than 60 percent for Clinton.