John Locher/AP
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.