Published on April 15, 2020 by Lauren Sliter
One continuing theme as the 2020 presidential election draws nearer is Democratic candidates duking it out to prove which one of them is ready to take on corporate America.
But that hasn’t stopped many of these candidates from being Wall Street darlings, raking in tons of donations from the largest banks and financial institutions in the U.S. — in some cases, tens of thousands more than those same big banks have donated to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.
Wondering how spending from big banks on the upcoming election is shaping up so far? Here are all the candidates (as of November 2019, one year before the election) and how much money they’ve received from the 10 largest banks and financial institutions in the country.
Since it would be virtually impossible to research the financial contributions of every bank you might belong to, we chose to focus on America’s 10 biggest, who hold a combined $12.4 trillion in assets. They are:
Source: https://www.bankrate.com/banking/biggest-banks-in-america/
As of Oct. 2019 (just over one year until election) these are the Democratic candidates who are still duking it out for their party’s nomination:
*Michael Bloomberg’s and Deval Patrick’s contributions are not included here, as they joined the race in November and have not reported any campaign financing to the Federal Election Commission yet.
While a handful of third-party and independent candidates have entered the race, their fundraising has been extremely minor compared to Democrat and Republican candidates. To learn more about their fundraising and where their campaign contributions are coming from, check out OpenSecrets.org’s 2020 presidential race tracker.
Now that all that is out of the way, here’s how much each candidate has been given by the top 10 largest banks and financial institutions in America.
Contribution data is up-to-date as of Q3 of 2019, including all information released up to Nov. 21, 2019. Contribution amounts come from Federal Election Commission data as reported by the candidates and compiled by OpenSecrets.org.
Despite Democratic candidates being largely anti-Wall Street, they’ve collected millions from the financial sector and big banks. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is currently leading the pack, with nearly $3 million in donations from financial institutions, though the top 10 banks represent a relatively small portion of those — just under 4 percent of the total money he’s raised from all banks nationwide.
On the other end of the spectrum is self-help author Marrianne Williamson, whose overall fundraising lags far behind that of the top candidates, but whose contributions from America’s largest banks comprise just over 26 percent of her total fundraising from the financial sector.
Here’s how each candidate’s fundraising compares, in order from who’s raised the most money from banks to who’s raised the least.
Joined race on Nov. 24, 2019, and has not yet reported any campaign earnings.
Joined race on Nov. 14, 2019, and has not yet reported any campaign earnings.
Donald Trump has raised more money from the financial sector than any other candidate in the 2020 race. It’s not surprising that he’s far outraised his challengers for the Republican nomination, since it’s extremely uncommon for anyone to unseat an incumbent in that race. But he’s also far outraising his Democratic challengers in the financial sector. Not that that’s terribly surprising, since a big theme of the 2020 race for the Democrats is who will take on big corporations and Wall Street.
Here’s how much the three Republican candidates have been raising from big banks and the financial sector as a whole, in order from most to least.
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