Hillary Clinton has significantly out-raised Donald Trump in the oil and gas industry, an important venue for campaign financing that has historically served as a boon for Republicans, according to a new Wall Street Journal analysis.
As of the latest fundraising cycle at the end of July, employees in the oil and gas sector had donated $525,000 to Clinton’s campaign, compared with $149,000 to Trump’s team, the newspaper reported.
That’s outside of the $470,000 that members of the industry gave to a fundraising account Trump holds with the Republican National Committee. But even that pales in comparison to Clinton’s DNC account, which took in $650,000.
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“Taken together, oil and gas donors have contributed roughly twice as much to support Mrs. Clinton’s campaign as Mr. Trump’s,” reported the Journal.
Its analysis points to heavy hitters in the typically Republican stronghold of business, such as Exxon Mobil (XOM), where employees have apparently made 175 donations consisting of $200 or more to the former secretary of state. Only one such donation was made to the GOP nominee, according to the WSJ. In the meantime, members of the American Petroleum Institute, a major lobbying group for oil executives, also have yet to open up their wallets for Trump, said the publication.
Remarkably, this development in fundraising doesn’t appear to be symbolic of a broader trend in the election. Other Republicans have continued to receive money from oil and gas industry employees this year, raising a collective 90% of the total $71 million in donations made so far. What’s significant is that “only a small amount of that is going to Mr. Trump,” noted the Journal.
See also: Trump Had a Huge July, Says His Top Wall Street Fundraiser
For more on the 2016 race, watch Coins2Day’s video:
While Republicans have made some gains in rebuilding party unity, findings like these only seem to protract the #NeverTrump tone. On Tuesday, The Dallas Morning News, a paper that has endorsed every GOP presidential candidate since 1968, evoked a similar reminder of the unorthodox nature of this election cycle, publishing a scathing editorial titled: “Donald Trump is no Republican.”
