Joe Biden · Deep dive

Affiliations

76.6%direct from individuals

In 2020, against 61.6% for the opposing campaign under the same rules.

Who is he tied to, upstream and lateral? For a politician the countable answer is where the campaign money came from — its structure, not its size. In 2020 three-quarters of receipts arrived directly from individuals, against three-fifths for the opposing campaign in the same cycle. And the committee that raised it was never wound up: C00703975 carried a second candidacy in 2024 and is now a PAC, which makes it a rare chance to hold the vehicle constant and watch the funding structure move anyway.

Six of six — the base set is complete

Every subject at this tier is asked the same six questions, fixed before the subject is chosen so the set cannot be picked to suit an argument. The others written for this record are Private Money, The Output, Reach, The Legal Record and Standing. With this one the base set is complete, so the overlay dives — the ones specific to what this subject has been — are unblocked. None of them could have been started before now.

The same question is answered for Donald Trump and Barack Obama, on the same transfer field — and only this record has a committee that outlived the candidacy.

Back to the full record.

76.6%

from individuals, 2020

Against 61.6% for the opposing campaign that cycle

22.7%

from affiliated transfers

Against 37.0% for the opposing campaign

29.7%

unitemised

Against 28.2% — the two campaigns were close on small donors

names on one committee

C00703975: Biden, Biden, Harris, then a PAC

party rules drawn from four cycles

The pattern is in the table; it is not stated as one

Structure, not size

Three-quarters direct from individuals, against three-fifths

Principal campaign committee, 2020 cycle, with the opposing campaign in the same cycle. A campaign’s funding shape means nothing on its own, so it sits beside the opposing principal campaign committee from the same year, operating under the same rules.

Committee	Receipts	From individuals	Affiliated transfers	Unitemised
Biden for PresidentC00703975	$1074.2m	76.6%$823.1m	22.7%$243.4m	29.7%$318.6m
Donald J. Trump for PresidentC00580100 · same-cycle control	$744.4m	61.6%$458.4m	37.0%$275.2m	28.2%$210.2m

Every transfer figure on this page comes from the affiliated-transfer receipts line. The FEC API carries more than one transfer field and which is populated depends on the form the committee files — reading one form’s field across committees filing two different forms manufactures a contrast out of the form type. Each committee-cycle here was decomposed into its component lines first, and all three sum to 100.00% of published receipts.

Reading it

Same cycle, same rules, two principal campaign committees. This one took three-quarters of its receipts directly from individuals against the other’s three-fifths, and a smaller share as transfers from affiliated committees — 22.7% against 37.0%. On unitemised giving, the usual proxy for small donors, the two are close: 29.7% and 28.2%. So the difference between them is not really about small donors; it is about how much of the money reached the campaign committee directly rather than through another committee first.

Counted as of 2026-08-10. This dive belongs to the record it sits inside. Money in politics as a subject in its own right is owned by Citizens United & the Money.