This year’s election is just five weeks away and of course, the most important contest will be the one at the ballot box on November 5. But in the meantime, another important contest is underway: the race to see which candidate and which party can raise the most money. In that tussle, we have a current leader — by a wide margin.
Thus far, the Democratic contenders (first Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris), together with the Democratic National Committee, have substantially outraised Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee. In the course of doing so, 42% of their receipts have come via donations of $200 or less compared to 32% for Trump. That is a reversal from the 2020 cycle when 48% of Trump’s donations came from small givers versus 38% for Biden. (Note that the balance of the money raised directly by the campaigns have a donation limit of $3,300. Amounts raised above that, to a limit of $41,300, go to the party committees.
The other key metric is cash on hand ¬— how much is in the bank to fund the stretch run. By this measure, the Democrats are also ahead, with a bank balance of $285 million as of the end of August, compared to $214 million for the Republicans.
Compared to previous cycles, the Democrats again stand out. The combined Biden/Harris efforts are narrowly outpacing what Biden achieved in 2020 and substantially ahead of Hillary Clinton in 2016. (All figures adjusted for inflation.) Trump, on the other hand, is badly lagging his 2020 totals and only modestly ahead of 2016.
Why are the Democrats doing so well? In considerable part because of the excitement that Kamala Harris has brought. In just July and August (Harris became the Democratic standard bearer on July 21), her campaign has raised a stunning $394 million while Trump has raised less than $100 million.
Equally dramatically, in just nine days, the number of individual donors to her campaign had passed the 2 million mark representing the total number of individual donors to Biden from the start of his campaign. By the end of August, that number had reached 3.8 million.
The news for Democrats is also good on the congressional side, although by substantially smaller margins. On the Senate side, the individual Democratic candidates and their associated campaign committee had raised $623 million as of the end of August, compared to $482 million for the Republicans. And the Democrats also had more cash on hand. The picture in the House of Representatives contests was similar.
In addition to candidate and party money, very large donors must contribute through Super PACs and similar independent expenditure organizations. Details on receipts are not always available but on the spending side, Republicans — perhaps not surprisingly — have an advantage, with spending on their behalf totaling just over $1 billion compared to $785 million for the groups supporting Democrats.
