Sanders cuts Clinton fundraising lead with late-night push

A last-minute haul pushed Sen. Bernie Sanders’s third-quarter fundraising numbers within just $2 million of Hillary Clinton, a Sanders aide told The Hill. 

The aide said the campaign raised more then $2 million online on Wednesday, the filing period’s final day. That includes more than $500,000 over the last two-and-a-half hours, $171,000 of that coming in the final hour.

{mosads}That brings Sanders’s total to $26 million, just behind Clinton’s $28 million. Her campaign announced that figure late Wednesday afternoon, and it’s unclear whether she received a significant bump in the last hours of the fundraising quarter. 

Clinton vastly outraised Sanders during their first quarter as candidates, $47 million to $15 million, so the latest haul represents a stunning improvement for the Sanders camp. Campaigns typically face a dip in funding over the summer months. 

Josh Schwerin, Clinton’s rapid response spokesman, tweeted on Thursday that their campaign has more than $32 million in cash on hand after the third fundraising quarter. Since Clinton ended the second quarter with almost $29 million in cash on hand, that’s only a net gain of $3 million and a “burn rate” of 89 percent.

Sanders’s team announced on Wednesday that he had about $25 million in cash on hand, a significant increase from the $12 million he had on hand after last quarter. His campaign’s burn rate for the latest quarter would be about 50 percent, assuming that number doesn’t change drastically as the campaign finalizes its results.  

The numbers are not official, as the campaigns have until the middle of the month to finalize their disclosures. Political junkies, campaign aides and journalists are all eyeing the release of those public reports to shed light on how much the candidates spent in order to raise those top-line numbers.