Biden's fourth-quarter fundraising revealed: Sanders and Buttigieg beat him — and Trump raised more than twice as much

Former Vice President and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden may still be ahead in some of the Democratic primary polls, but his latest fundraising numbers fell below the sums announced by his Democratic competitors as well as President Donald Trump's re-election campaign.

On Thursday, Biden announced a $22.7 million fundraising haul for the fourth quarter of 2019, which ended Dec. 31, calling it "our biggest quarter so far" in the course of the campaign.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Biden said in a video message to supporters. "We had a great quarter and we're going to expect another one next time."

While $22.7 million is no small sum, it's lower than two of his closest competitors in the Democratic field. Self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) announced a fourth-quarter haul of $34.5 million while former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg announced a $24.7 million fourth-quarter take.

Despite the fundraising disparities, Biden's polling average still has him ahead of his primary opponents, with a RealClearPolitics average of 28.3 percentage points against Sanders' 19.1 and Buttigieg's 8.3 as of Thursday.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, President Donald Trump's re-election campaign announced a sum more than double Biden's cash haul at $46 million on Thursday.

Campaign Communication Director Tim Murtaugh called the total "a big, unprecedented number" and added that "it does not include money raised by RNC or the joint committees between the campaign and RNC." The sum of those efforts, he added, "will be awe-inspiring."

A lingering question in the 2020 cash race, however, is how much Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — whose RCP polling average was at 15.1 on Thursday — raised for her presidential bid as 2019 came to a close. She hadn't yet announced a final sum for the quarter as of publication on this story, but the campaign sent out an email four days ahead of the deadline saying that it had raised "a little over $17 million," which was "a good chunk behind where we were at this time last quarter."

The appeal set a $20 million goal, which was below the previous quarter's sum of $24.6 million.