Vice President Kamala Harris entered the homestretch of the general election building a campaign that was bigger than former President Donald J. Trump’s in nearly every discernible category.
She is raising more money than Mr. Trump, with her campaign collecting more than four times as much as his did in August.
She is spending far more money than he is — nearly three times more in August.
And she is holding on to more money than Mr. Trump, ending the month with $100 million more in the bank than him.
The vast discrepancies between the two operations were laid bare in new filings with the Federal Election Commission on Friday night from the candidates’ two main campaign committees, Harris for President and Donald J. Trump for President Inc. The reports detailed their August fund-raising, costs and cash-on-hand as of Aug. 30, along with similar figures from their national party committees.The candidates had already announced their top-line figures for the month of August: Ms. Harris’s campaign, when combined with allied party committees, had almost tripled Mr. Trump in fund-raising, collecting $361 million for all of her committees while Mr. Trump’s campaign and associated committees took in just $130 million for his. All told, including some campaign committees that don’t file reports until next month, Mr. Trump entered September facing a $110 million cash deficit against Ms. Harris, according to their self-disclosed numbers.
On the surface, the campaigns built by Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump are similar. They both spend much of their money on advertising, and other big costs include private planes, payroll, postage and mail. But the new reports reveal how dissimilar the campaigns are in terms of scale.
Take media-related costs, for example. Both campaigns dedicated about 80 percent of their spending to that category. But the difference in raw numbers was enormous: The Harris campaign itself spent $137 million during August on media, as opposed to $47 million spent by the Trump campaign. Other records show that Mr. Trump is being significantly outspent on both television and digital advertising. (Of course, Mr. Trump has long been known for his ability to dominate news cycles, garnering what campaigns refer to as “earned media.”)
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