(Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang suspended his presidential campaign this week after poor results in Iowa and New Hampshire. Now the focus turns to his loyal group of supporters, many of whom have said they would not back another 2020 Democrat as the nominee.

Just 23 percent of Yang’s campaign donors gave to another 2020 Democrat, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets. That compared to 52 percent of donors to Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), 47 percent of donors to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), 39 percent of donors to former mayor Pete Buttigieg and 30 percent of former Vice President Joe Biden’s donors.

Roughly the same percentage of donors to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), nearly 23 percent, gave to another 2020 Democrat. However, that figure is skewed by the fact that Sanders has far more individual donors than his primary opponents.

Yang’s campaign boasted that it brought in supporters who weren’t previously engaged in politics, and stressed it wasn’t afraid to court those who voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. An Emerson College poll released this month found that 42 percent of Yang’s supporters would not support any other Democratic candidate as the party’s nominee. That figure was much lower for the other 2020 Democrats, including Sanders.

Yang’s exit won’t free up too many potential votes for Democrats still in the race, but his energized donor base might be attractive to the remaining contenders. Yang raised $31 million through the new year, including a stunning $16.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019.

When Yang donors contribute to other Democrats, Sanders is their top choice. One-tenth of Yang donors also contributed to Sanders. The second most popular candidate for Yang donors is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii). Even though Gabbard has far fewer donors than other 2020 Democrats, she received campaign cash from 5 percent of Yang donors.

Each of the top 2020 Democrats congratulated Yang on his improbable run Tuesday. Yang has said he will support the Democratic nominee, regardless of who it is.

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Yang ran on the issue of automation and artificial intelligence, arguing that massive companies have already automated away millions of factory jobs and are coming for truck drivers next. As a tech entrepreneur himself, Yang railed against tech industry giants for inventing and implementing what he saw as job-killing technologies. He proposed a universal basic income, where every U.S. citizen receives $1,000 a month, in what he called the “trickle-up economy.”

His message resonated with tech industry donors. Employees of Google, Amazon and Microsoft made up the top three organizational donors for Yang, who said tech companies should pay a new kind of tax to help fund universal basic income. Some tech industry executives, including Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google product management director Scott Johnston, made large contributions to Yang’s campaign.

Yang’s donor pool was overwhelmingly male. More than 70 percent of his itemized campaign cash came from men. Only Gabbard gets a higher percentage of money from men, at nearly 78 percent.

Yang’s campaign gained fundraising momentum in the latter half of 2019 but failed to capitalize in the early primary states. Yang finished with 1 percent of the Iowa vote and garnered less than 3 percent of the vote in New Hampshire.

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick also dropped out this week after the New Hampshire results rolled in. A closely tied hybrid PAC spent nearly $2.4 million backing Patrick, but he only received 1,215 votes.

Researcher Doug Weber contributed to this report.



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