Millions of Dollars Pouring in for Trump at Last Minute

The last seven days of the election has brought a flood of money.

John Locher/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Millions of dollars have poured into the presidential race in the final week of the campaign, as the candidates and outside groups launch a flurry of last-minute attack ads. With a race so close, the money raised and spent in the last week of the election might make the difference—so who is winning the money race in the final days?

Campaigns don’t report spending over the final days or how much they’ve raised from small donors, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign is massively outraising Trump’s, at least when it comes to larger donations. (Contributions below $200 aren’t detailed in the last-minute reports released daily by each campaign.) Both campaigns have vaunted small-money donor programs—and fundraising pitches are still blasting into email boxes—but it’s the donations between $200 and $2,700 that have traditionally fueled campaigns. In the last seven days, Clinton has raised a reported $4.4 million, including $1.7 million this past Friday alone. Trump’s campaign has raised less than that total from large donors since November 1—just $1.3 million.

But the situation is completely reversed when it comes to the high-octane outside spending race—the type of spending that super-PACs do and that is disclosed almost immediately. Super-PACs working to elect Trump have spent $46.2 million in November, while super-PACs on Team Hillary have spent $27.7 million.

Not surprisingly, the vast majority of that super-PAC money has been spent on negative ads attacking the candidates.

Of the $35 million in attack ads hitting Clinton in the last week, a full $28 million of it has come from either Future 45, a super-PAC that has raised $10 million from Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson and his wife, or from the 45 Committee, a dark-money group that is closely affiliated with Future 45 but which does not disclose its donors. Of the $23 million spent attacking Trump, $13.6 million has come from the pro-Clinton super-PAC Priorities USA. In its last fundraising report, Priorities USA disclosed that it had raised $18 million from a variety of prominent Democratic donors.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate