The presidential contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump has become a money pit, with the candidates’ campaign committees and associated political action committees combining to raise a whopping $2.5 billion.
The Harris-Walz campaign, hybrid committees, aligned PACs and super PACs have raised an astounding $1.39 billion — including some funds transferred from President Biden’s defunct campaign — in the three months since the 81-year-old commander-in-chief announced July 21 he would end his bid for re-election.
Meanwhile, Trump and Sen. JD Vance’s campaign, hybrid committees and PACs have raked in $1.09 billion since the former president announced a third consecutive White House run on Nov. 15, 2022.
In addition to the fundraising bonanza from the rival campaigns and their allies, the Republican National Committee has hauled in $368 million compared to the Democratic National Committee’s $484 million between January 2023 and Sept. 30, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
Nearly two-thirds of Harris contributions, more than $912 million, have come from campaign committees rather than outside spending while more than half of Trump’s money — more than $613 million — has come from non-affiliated donors.
Harris has also been buoyed by about $474 million in outside spending, while Trump’s campaign committees have pulled in some $376 million in comparable spending.
“It is no exaggeration to say that many Americans believe this may be the most important election in their lifetime, a pivotal election that may determine the future of this nation,” former FEC member Hans von Spakovsky told The Post. “The fact that more of Trump’s donations are coming from individuals instead of committees seems to be an indication of his greater support from the public.”
The Post calculated the figures based on FEC filings for each candidate’s campaigns and used data from political donation tracker OpenSecrets.com to determine the amount of outside spending.
Four years ago, Trump and Biden received $2.71 billion combined in contributions, the record for a presidential race alone.
However, with spending on House and Senate races included, this year’s election is projected to cost a record-high $15.9 billion.
That’s almost double the 2016 spending levels of $8.5 billion and slightly higher than the $15.1 billion spent in 2020. When adjusted for inflation over the past four years under Biden and Harris, the 2020 election’s total bill actually comes to $18.3 billion.
“It will be interesting to see if fundraising records continue to be broken in upcoming presidential election cycles,” said Tom Moore, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a former FEC attorney. “It may well be that Trump served as a unique fundraising accelerant, and with him off the stage, presumably, in the 2028 cycle, the heat may be turned down a bit.”
“There may be a saturation point where elections can no longer get more expensive, but we haven’t reached it yet,” OpenSecrets deputy research director Brendan Glavin said in a statement to CNN.
“Super PACs and billionaires continue to spend more and more hoping to select our elected officials. And right now, it is looking as though there isn’t a ceiling to how much an election in the US can cost.”
Von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, added: “Americans are more deeply divided on economic, cultural, foreign policy, and societal issues today than we have been in many generations. As long as that divide remains, and as long as the federal government has such a powerful role in making decisions over those issues, we will see continue to see increases in the amount of money spent on political campaigns.”
Most of the massive 2024 fundraising haul for the presidential candidates has gone toward digital and television ad spending.
Top groups supporting Harris since the start of 2023 include the Future Forward US hybrid PAC that brought in roughly $305 million and spent about $235 million; the American Bridge 21st Century PAC, which raised about $84 million and spent about $78 million; and the Lincoln Project, which drew in about $20 million and doled out roughly $17.3 million, per OpenSecrets.
Top outside groups for Trump include the Make America Great Again Inc. PAC, which hauled in about $322 million and spent some $315 million from January 2023; the Preserve America PAC, which accrued about $100 million and dished out roughly $93 million; and tech guru Elon Musk’s America PAC, that amassed some $84 million and spent about $80 million, according to OpenSecrets data.
Harris and her committees set the record for the biggest fundraising quarter ever in a presidential competition between July 1 and Sept. 30, netting more than $1 billion. Her principal campaign committee outraised Trump’s by more than 3 to 1 during September, $221.8 million to $62.7 million, FEC filings show.
“Trump has absolutely been an unparalleled motivating factor for fundraising on both sides,” Moore said, while noting “plenty of apocalyptic rhetoric” from Democrats — as well as Republicans — has caused donors to pull out their checkbooks.
“This is the first post-Dobbs presidential election, and I would be shocked if that decision, which has been proudly embraced by Trump, isn’t motivating a good chunk of Democratic donors,” he went on, referencing the Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that legalized abortion.
The immense campaign contributions are also a result of the high court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, which allowed for unlimited political spending by corporations, so-called “dark money” and other outside groups.
“I think Democrats are keenly aware that whatever short-term success they have had in raising dark money — and make no mistake, they have been very successful at it — that over the long haul, an unlimited ability of moneyed interests to exert political influence in secret is not in Democrats’ political self-interest,” Moore added.
“Harris is raising a much higher proportion of her totals in hard, regulated, totally disclosed dollars than Trump is,” he noted. “That argues for greater Democratic interest in ridding the system of outside spending.”
Political “dark money” groups shield their donors from scrutiny by accepting donations under their nonprofit status and later funneling their contributions to outside PACs.
Caitlin Sutherland, founding executive director at Americans for Public Trust, a right-leaning watchdog that scrutinizes outside spending, told The Post that “a corresponding trend of the number one donor to the outside super PAC is their nonprofit dark money arm.”
But Sutherland acknowledged there are limits to the sway political cash can have on voters.
“It doesn’t matter how much campaign money you have if you have a bad candidate,” she said.
“Even if you’re saturating the airwaves, even if you’re pouring money into digital campaigns and into political mailers, ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s the voters’ decision.”
Historically, Trump has been dramatically outspent in general election cycles.
In 2020, Biden narrowly defeated the 45th president after raising a then-record-breaking $1.62 billion from his committees and allied PACs. Trump and his backers countered by raising $1.09 billion that cycle.
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and aligned PACs raised $769.9 million against Trump, who defeated her despite raising a relatively paltry $433.4 million.
“President Trump has proven to be a fundraising juggernaut and has built the most robust small-dollar fundraising operation in history fueled by tens of millions of hardworking Americans from all 50 states who chip in what they can to help him Make America Great Again,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“Kamala Harris has burned hundreds of millions of dollars and the only return on that investment has been her decline in the polls. Money doesn’t translate to victory when you have a bad candidate who can hardly speak without a teleprompter.”
Since Biden’s departure from the race, Harris and her allies have spent a little more than $1 billion on ads, estimates by the political spending tracker AdImpact show.
That comes to an average of $134.94 per second on ad spending between Biden suspending his re-election campaign and Oct. 21.
Trump’s campaign and allied outside groups have spent some $791 million on ads from July 21 to Oct. 21, according to financial disclosures, with AdImpact pegging average per-second ad spending at $82.76.
For the final days before the Nov. 5 election, the Harris camp intends to pay $182.1 million more for ads, with Trump’s team slated for an additional $133.3 million, almost 80% of which is going to battleground states.
Trump also pulled significant earned media due to the four unprecedented criminal indictments filed against him in 2023, according to figures his campaign shared with The Post.
At the start of his Manhattan “hush money” trial earlier this year, the former president received as much as $313 million worth of digital news coverage and $62.69 million worth of TV coverage.
The May guilty verdict on 34 counts of business fraud brought another $483 million in digital and $93.59 million in TV earned media.
The 78-year-old’s recent shift at a McDonald’s in the swing district of Bucks County, Pa., generated $56.6 million worth of digital articles and $59.1 million worth of TV coverage.
The Harris campaign neither shared its earned media figures nor responded to repeated requests for comment.
