Hillary Clinton Leads the Race to Raise Funds

In what is shaping up to be the costliest US presidential election in history, Hillary Clinton raised $6m (£3m) over the last week, including $2.6m at one event.

Mrs Clinton is thought to be leading the Democratic field in terms of finance as well as the opinion polls, but the true figures will not be known until next month.

All 19 candidates for presidential nomination have to file details of how much they raised during the first three months of the year with the federal election commission by midnight on April 15. These will be published the next day and will provide the first concrete figures of the campaign, with each candidate ranked in terms of their ability to raise money. Failure to do well may therefore hurt a candidate's prospects.

Massie Ritsch of the Centre for Responsive Politics, which analyses campaign funding, said yesterday that polling was irrelevant at present. "At this point in the campaign, money is the only way to measure these candidates," he said.

Mrs Clinton's campaign said she raised $2.6m last weekend in Hollywood - double the amount raised by her closest Democratic rival, Barack Obama, in Hollywood last month. During her visit about 700 invited guests each paid $2,300, the legal maximum, to dine with her at the home of Ron Burkle, a supermarket billionaire. About 250 of these guests paid a further $2,300 for a pre-dinner reception at which they could have their picture taken with Mrs Clinton. The guests included the actors James Brolin, Ted Danson and Barbra Streisand, and the founder of Motown records Berry Gordy.

Her team said her target for the first three months was $15m, but this could be an attempt to lower expectations. Mr Obama's team said he would raise between $8m and $10m, but this too could be a deliberate lowering of expectations.

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, could finish ahead of John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in the financial rankings, even though both of them are ahead of him in the polls after he held at least 21 fundraising events this month alone.