Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson has shown the viability of his campaign to win the White House in next year's election by generating $20 million in a summer fundraising campaign, levelling him up to the likes of Democratic presidential bet Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama in terms of fundraising drawing power.
The only thing different with Carson, according to the Gospel Herald, is that he does not have the financial support of corporate America and Hollywood, which have regularly been the major sources of campaign financing by other top presidential candidates.
What the former neurosurgeon is doing is building a huge and loyal digital audience. More than half of the $20 million he helped raise in the past three months came from online sources. The $20 million Carson raised even beat the $14 million raised by Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
His campaign manager Barry Bennett said Carson's online fundraising strategy is similar to the one being used by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Because of Carson's social media presence, he managed to draw in thousands of individuals to an event in Phoenix back in August despite the late notice.
"We got 12,000 people to our event in Phoenix in less than four days," Bennett said, adding, "All I did was post it on social media."
Internet users are impressed by Carson's life story and anti-establishment approach. Meanwhile, others are simply happy that they get to be involved in his campaign trail just by following Carson's Facebook page.
Carson only has 692,000 Twitter followers, as compared to Clinton who has 4.4 million and Donald Trump who has 4.3 million. However, he beat all other presidential hopefuls when it comes to Facebook popularity.
He holds brief chats every weekday evening, and even chooses to answer three questions from users. Rachelle Davis, one of his four million Facebook followers, noted that his daily "Ask Ben" sessions are a good way to get regular citizens' questions across.
"He's not just putting out his political line. He's answering people's questions," she said. "It makes people out here feel like they're important."
