Last night the first Democratic Presidential Debate of 2016 occurred in Las Vegas with 5 candidates participating; Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb, Martin O'Malley, and Lincoln Chafee. Here's CNN's 2 minute recap if you missed it.

I don't think there was a clear, definite winner; the front runners did well and the lower tier candidates did poorly. It will be interesting to see how polling is affected. One hopeful affect, is the exclusion of Joe Biden from future polling. Joe Biden did not participate in last night's debate which strongly signals an intention not to enter the race. However, the first filing deadline is November 5th in Alabama.

Here is where each candidate stood polling wise before yesterday's debate in each of the first 3 states:

I'll write a follow-up article in about a week that addresses who "won" based on the first batch of post-debate polling using the above numbers as a baseline.

In the meantime, before new polling is conducted or published, I want to quickly cover the money race. The most recent quarterly FEC filing period elapsed 2 weeks ago on September 30th:

Boston (CNN) Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign raised more than $28 million in the third fundraising quarter of 2015, a number only slightly more than the $25 million Bernie Sanders raised.

Clinton's third quarter fundraising brings her total haul to $75 million, aides said. And while it is less than the $45 million Clinton's campaign raised in the second quarter, it appears the campaign is likely to reach it's $100 million goal by the end of 2015.

Sanders' fundraising is closing in on Clinton, however, despite only ever headlining seven fundraisers as a candidate. Michael Briggs, Sanders' spokesman, said Wednesday night that the campaign has $25 million cash-on-hand after raising $15 million in the second quarter.

Source: CNN [1]

While Hillary continues to lead in the overall dollars collected, Sanders has tapped into many more individual donors:

Rather, 650,000 donors, some of whom had given multiple times, made 1.3 million donations to his campaign.

[...]

Sanders’s campaign said its average donation is $24.86. Although his campaign would not release a precise tally of the percentage of their funds coming from small donors, it has touted its independence from big-money donors.

Source: Salon [2]

His campaign has done, and continues to do an excellent job of tapping individuals as evidenced by their post debate fundraising. While the debate was ongoing, Sanders' campaign urged supporters, via email, to "make a contribution before Bernie steps off the stage."

Sanders raised over $1.4 million dollars from the start of the debate until about 3 a.m. eastern, his campaign said. According to his campaign, they received at least 44,000 individual donations, with the average contribution being $31.54.

Source: Huffington Post [3]

Clinton's campaign sent a similar fundraising email, both before and after, urging her supporters to "become an official Debate Donor" by donating $1 to the campaign. The financial windfall from Clinton's debate performance was not made public:

On Wednesday morning, Clinton’s camp wasn’t saying whether her big night on the debate stage yielded big dollars.

Source: USA Today [4]

We won't know who won the debate from a polling perspective for several days, but it seems likely that Sanders was the financial winner.

Updated on October 14, 2015 at 11:40:11 PM CT