The Donor Gender Gap: The US Senate
Let's examine how gender influences political giving by analyzing Senate fundraising data from 2019 to 2024.
Money plays an ever-growing role in politics. In 2024, campaign donations reached new record highs, as individual contributors and PACs gave record sums to the candidates. While contributions to Presidential campaigns often make for the big headlines, millions are being poured into the campaign accounts of U.S. Senators.
A look at public data from 2019 to 2024, provided by Open Secrets, shows there are drastic differences in each Senator’s fundraising profile, especially between the two major parties. There’s a lot to analyze, and in the following weeks, we will take a closer look at which industries fund who, which Senator takes in the most PAC money, and which Party has the biggest share of small contributors. For today, however, we will analyze one of the most overlooked factors in fundraising: Gender.
There will be an interactive table with all Senators at the end of this article.
The Gender Divide
Anyone who has ever followed US politics is familiar with the gender divide. In 2024, Harris won women by 7 points while losing men by 12 points, a 19-point gap. So it’s not surprising that we see a similar divide in fundraising data:
The divide is most evident when we take a look at the profile of contributors to an average Senator from each party. The average Democratic Senator (including two Independent Senators who caucus with Democrats) has 8% more female contributors, while men outnumber women by 17% when it comes to Republicans. A gap of 25 points.
I chose this approach of analyzing the average Senator, because if we would simply look at the makeup of a party’s total contributors by gender, big fundraisers, like Senators Warren & Sanders, could distort the results, though only slightly. The chart also doesn’t consider how much each contributor spends, because that number is heavily influenced by the fact that men continue to outspend women. Below, you can see how the data changes when we look at the money itself.
You can immediately spot the vast difference from the previous chart. Men drastically outspend women when donating to Republican Senators, but even regarding donations to Democrats, men outspend women by a staggering 16 points. There are only two Senators, Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MS), who received a majority of their funds from women.
The question of why men outspend women so drastically in politics has been the subject of past research. In early 2025, Shauna L. James and her colleagues concluded that donations are the only form of political participation where the gender gap persists and “in some respects, has grown”. While women may be equally likely to donate money to a candidate, James et al. write, the “super-contributors,” who donate the highest amounts, remain disproportionally male.
Now, let’s get to the most interesting questions and find out: Which Senator has the most male/female contributors? Which Senator has the highest, which one the lowest, share of male donors?
When it comes to the gender divide of total contributors, the picture couldn’t be any clearer. When ranking the Senators by their share of female contributors, Democrats take the first 42 spots. Yes, you heard that right, 42! They are led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). The first Republican to show up is Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) with a share 48% female donors.
While Republicans unsurprisingly dominate the charts regarding the share of male contributors, the picture is less one-sided. In fact, we can find three Democratic challengers in the top 15.
Sanders, Warren, Ossoff: The People’s Senators?
Apart from the world of percentages, there’s some truth to be found in raw numbers. According to data from 2019-2024, one Senator outperformed the pack: Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the progressive icon and candidate for the Democratic Presidential Nomination in 2016 and 2020, collected funds from over two million different contributors (1.1M men & 900k women). This also put him at the top of the money list, with a haul of over 200 million US dollars.
Notably, he is joined by two other Senators, Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA). Both fell short of Sanders’ impressive performance, but their 1.1 million contributors each still put them well ahead of fourth place.
You can explore the data in the table at the bottom of this article. The table is interactive. You can sort it by the different data groups and search for your Senator.
Why do I mention this trio? Because there’s something interesting to be found there for 2026 and 2028. That Sanders and Warren show up at the top is not really a surprise. Both are national figures of the progressive movement, and both had promising campaigns for President in 2020 - finishing in 2nd and 3rd place behind Joe Biden in the primary. During that campaign, both, but particularly Sanders, impressed with their fundraising totals. Their strong 2019-2024 haul is therefore not a surprise at all. But what about Jon Ossoff?
Ossoff became a Senator only recently, in 2020, after unseating a Republican incumbent in Georgia. As a swing-state Senator, Ossoff is known to all who follow the political circuit, but his national profile remains low, especially compared to the likes of Warren and Sanders. Naturally, it is astonishing to see him hold up with these two when it comes to campaign contributors. His Senate colleague from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, “only” had 330k contributors, and Warnock already had another election cycle to fundraise for in 2022.
Ossoff’s strong financial backing by 1.1 million Americans (55% women / 45% men) might help him in the future. He will likely defend his vulnerable seat in the 2026 midterms, further cementing his status as a potential 2028 candidate.