Donald Trump received fewer campaign donations in the final quarter of 2023 than Joe Biden. Trump's campaign reported donations of 19 million dollars to the electoral commission for the last three months of last year. Biden received 33 million dollars and Trump's only remaining intra-party rival Nikki Haley received 17 million dollars.

Anticapitalists repeatedly claim that the rich have a decisive influence on politics and the outcome of elections, primarily through donations. This theory has always been wrong and the amount of donations will in all likelihood not be decisive for the election in 2024 either.

If money alone bought political power, Donald Trump would never have become the Republican candidate for the U.S. presidency in 2016. That honor would more likely have gone to Jeb Bush, who was able to raise far more in political donations. Even Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens, political scientists and two of the most prominent proponents of the thesis that U.S. politics is determined by the rich, concede that “most of the big-money contributors -- and most Republican think-tankers and officeholders -- supported other candidates.” And: “Trump’s positions went directly contrary to the views of wealthy........

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