Early numbers suggest that Hillary Clinton has broken fund raising records by bringing in $26 million in the first quarter (she transferred in another $10 million to bring her total to $36 million). However, as Michael at The Moderate Voice points out, this may not be as good as it sounds for the Clinton camp.

Estimates put Barack Obama's total around $21 million, maybe more. While Hillary came into the race as a pre-ordained front runner and was expected to break records with her fund raising, Obama's donor intake will probably garner more attention and buzz in the media because his results are a little more surprising and indicate that he is gaining momentum.

Furthermore, much of Clinton's money came from big donors, which may be tapped out. Obama took a different approach in the days leading up to the deadline, measuring success by the number of donors rather than dollars raised, to provide a measurement of the width of his support. His Web site lists 83,531 contributers for more than 108,095 contributions. I would be interested to see how Clinton's stats compare.

[Update: The Huffington Post is reporting that approximately 50,000 people contributed to the Clinton campaign.]

For a different gauge of each candidate's reach, the graph below includes traffic details for each of the candidates' Web sites. (Key: Obama-Dark blue; Clinton-Red; Edwards-Green; Giuliani-Brown; McCain-Light blue)