The new results are in on the Federal Election Commission presidential fundraising map, and it shows a trajectory clearly favoring the Democratic candidates. At the end of March, the combined Democratic total was 32.2M ahead of the Republican pack; the edge has now swelled to 56.2M. There are a lot of stories in the individual numbers. For instance, former Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK) has doubled his income since the beginning of the year. The fact that leaves him where he was, 19th out of 19 with 200K total, puts him in the category of a statistical anomaly.
However, others were able to double their income (or better), and in these cases we're talking some real money. Barack Obama (D-IL) went from 25.7 to 58.6M, nearly catching up with leader Hillary Clinton. On the second tier, Bill Richardson (D-NM) went from 6.2M to 13.2M and on the lower tier Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) went from 0.4M to 1.1M. On the Republican side, Mitt Romney (R-MA) and Rudy Giuliani just missed doubling their take, and numerous lower tier candidates did manage to double up and then some.
The big winner was Ron Paul (R-TX), who ran his total by a factor of five, from 0.6M to 3M. Jim Gilmore (R-VA), who is on the bottom of the Republican chart with 0.4M, just withdrew from the race. Several Republican possibles remain unannounced, most notably Fred Thompson (R-TN), whose announcement is generally considered to be a matter of time only.
