WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Clinton entered the final phase of her presidential bid with a resounding campaign cash advantage over Donald Trump.
New fundraising reports show her campaign and joint accounts with Democrats had $153 million in the bank as of last week. That’s more than double the $68 million Trump’s campaign and partnership committees had on hand. The Trump campaign itself has only $16 million cash on hand for the final two weeks of the campaign compared to $62 million for Clinton.
Clinton’s continued fundraising advantage helps ensure the Democratic nominee can keep her sprawling political operation at full strength in the frantic final days of the race. She maintains a staff of more than 800 — several times larger than Trump’s — and has spent more on advertising than the Republican has every single week of the race.
Over the course of the primary and general elections, Clinton’s campaign has hauled in $513 million, roughly double what Trump’s has.
She outpaced him again in the first 19 days of October, the new reports show, when her campaign reaped $53 million as his brought in about $30 million.
While Trump, a New York businessman who says he is worth $10 billion, typically makes a personal contribution of about $2 million each month, he had not done so yet in October. The latest contribution reports, up to date as of Wednesday, show he had given only about $33,000.
The candidates and many outside groups involved in the presidential race are filing their final pre-election fundraising reports on Thursday. The filings cover the first 19 days of the month.
Outside groups backing Clinton are better funded than those supporting Trump, the reports show. Super PACS can take unlimited contributions from wealthy donors, but they may not coordinate with the campaigns.
The pro-Clinton Priorities USA raised $18 million in 19 days. Some of its biggest most recent donors include Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Susan Mandel, the wife of a hedge fund founder, who each put in $2.5 million this month.
Priorities USA has been spending most of its money on TV ads. It plans to spend $21 million on ads this week and next, according to Kantar Media’s political ad tracker.
Rebuilding America Now, one of several pro-Trump groups, raised only about $215,000 through the early part of this month. As of last week, the super PAC only had about $1.2 million in cash on hand. Another, Great America PAC, raised $2 million and had about as much left to spend.
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Keep track on how much Clinton and Trump are spending on television advertising, and where they’re spending it, via AP’s interactive ad tracker. http://elections.ap.org/content/ad-spending
Madame President has a serious campaign. She is running a serious and professional operation. She’s more supported by the American people and it shows. Business entity Donald Trump has indicated from the start that his “campaign” was to be about him and his “brand.” He has been grifting his supporters all along – and this is why large numbers of big-moneyed Republicans refuse to financially support Trump’s campaign. I look forward to the next couple of years when the investigations start revealing just what he and his family have been doing with his campaign dollars. I’m looking forward to his trials. Some prison time is likely in Donald’s future.
Well, there seems to be a pretty open and shut case against the Trump campaign for soliciting money from non-Americans. Literally hundreds of emails were sent to members of foreign parliaments all over the globe…England, Australia, Iceland, the Netherlands, Finland. Merely soliciting the money is illegal, and they have been doing that in very big, and not so subtle ways (spam emails).
And then there is the UK-Telegraph report this week
Why all of this has been ignored by the MSM here is unforgivable, IMO. But he has been so blatant about it, I don’t see how the FEC can turn a blind eye after the election.
So. TPM has Trump in the lead in Florida. Fivethirtyeight has Clinton with just under a %65 percent chance of winning Florida. If anyone reads this at TPM, or if any of you, my wonderfully, intelligent friends know where TPM pulls their data from, I’d appreciate an explanation.
Yeah, but Trump is a billionaire who is self-funding his campaign. His infusion of cash in the next 10 days is going to be huge. Nobody infuses like Donald!
Where do you see that? TPM has it as a toss-up, with Clinton ahead by 1.5 pts, a result that is driven by the Selzer/Bloomberg poll (see http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/flurry-florida-polls-show-close-race).
Sam Wang and the PEC also have Clinton with a > 60% probability of winning Florida.