The DNC Gave Kamala Harris a Major Boost

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Kamala Harris and Tim Walz put their hands up while on stage at the Democratic National Convention

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The Democratic National Convention wasn’t just four days of good vibes: It was also the cause of a major fundraising and volunteer boom for the Harris-Walz ticket.

A massive fundraising haul is nothing new for Harris.

The campaign has now raised $540 million since launching one month ago, which Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon called “a record for any campaign in history” in a Sunday morning memo announcing the figure. Part of that is due to a convention-week bump: The campaign had its best fundraising hour ever just after Vice President Harris’s speech, according to the memo; another campaign spokesperson said a total of $82 million was raised during convention week. Those totals reflect funds raised by Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee, and joint fundraising committees, the campaign said.

A third of the week’s donations were from first-time contributors, almost a fifth of whom were young voters and two-thirds of whom were women, the campaign said. Volunteers are also fired up, as O’Malley Dillon reported supporters had signed up for nearly 200,000 shifts since Monday.

The massive fundraising haul is nothing new for Harris’s campaign: As my colleague Russ Choma previously reported, the campaign raised $81 million in its first 24 hours, which they said was the largest such take in history. And as I reported last month, it raised $200 million in Harris’s first week campaigning, two-thirds of which was said to have come from first-time donors.

Meanwhile, Trump spent the week struggling to gain traction as he ranted against Harris and the Democrats on his platform Truth Social. That may have something to do with the fact that not only has Harris been leading him in fundraising, but she has also been leading him in the polls.