If the battleground state ad reservations are any guide, the Trump campaign is hosed.
The political advertising tracking agency AdImpact recently posted the presidential campaign’s battleground state reservations, and it’s not a good look for the Republican ticket.
Top Presidential Advertisers
Harris campaign: $107.4M
Future Foward PAC: $152.6M
Other Democratic groups: $42.5M
Total Democratic: $302.5M
Trump campaign: $57.6M
MAGA Inc: $57.4M
Other Republican groups: $19.8M
Total Republican: $134.8M
Democrats are outspending Republicans by more than a 2-1 margin, and the disparity is most apparent in the battleground state reservations:
Pennsylvania:
Dem: $70.8M
GOP: $70.6M
Georgia:
Dem: $39M
GOP: $38.7M
Michigan:
Dem: $55.2M
GOP: $6.6M
Arizona:
Dem: $34.9M
GOP: $9.9M
Wisconsin:
Dem: $33.1M
GOP: $3.5M
North Carolina:
Dem: $26M
GOP: $2.8M
Nevada:
Dem: $19.5M
GOP: $1.4M
Omaha, Nebraska:
Dem: $7M
GOP: $0
These numbers are nothing short of stunning. Ads don’t vote, and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton significantly outspent former president Donald Trump in 2016, so this isn’t determinative of any final outcome. But it is certainly suggestive of a Republican campaign struggling to financially compete, and perhaps even writing off certain states.
If Republicans are only contesting the states in which they’re investing real money, this is what that map looks like:
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win, so this map is already a loser for Trump. But let’s charitably assume that the Trump campaign doesn’t think North Carolina is in play for the Democrats. (It is this year, and it was in 2020.) The map looks like this:
With this map, Vice President Kamala Harris is two electoral votes shy of the necessary 270, but she has three states to get there. Trump has no margin of error, needing all three tight battlegrounds in order to win. In the 538 poll aggregates, Harris is currently winning Pennsylvania by 1.2 points and Georgia by 0.4 points, and is losing North Carolina by 0.4 points. Everything came up roses for Trump in 2016, and he came up short in 2020. And he’s a significantly worse candidate this year than he was the prior two elections.
I am skeptical of the power of advertising to move numbers significantly at the presidential level, where both candidates have universal name recognition and partisan patterns are baked into the electorate. But if that ad ratio remains at that stark 10-1 ratio in North Carolina, my hypothesis will be put to the test. Can a mostly unanswered Democratic ad barrage move numbers in the Tarheel State in Harris’ direction? Let’s find out!
A doddering low-energy Trump did only seven campaign events in August, but two of them were in North Carolina, showing he hasn’t fully written it off, which makes the ad reservation numbers that much more perplexing. He didn’t do any campaign rallies in Michigan or Wisconsin, yet he staged one in uncompetitive Montana. He’s got just one event scheduled between Aug. 30 and Sept. 7, when he amazingly visits Wisconsin for the first time since June 18.
There are 62 days left until Election Day, and about half that until people start voting. Trump couldn’t even bother to show up anywhere on Labor Day Monday, and he sure isn’t showing any urgency in hitting the campaign trail. Nonstop appearances on Fox News and other friendly outlets are as effective as if Harris spent her time talking to Daily Kos.
As of the July 31 report, Trump had $151 million cash on hand. The Trump campaign reservations above are for around $58 million. He’s obviously also raised money through all of August, and will continue to raise millions more through September and October. He has plenty of time to pour money into some of the neglected states.
Regardless, Harris had almost $220 million cash on hand at the end of July, well before the gangbusters Democratic National Convention, when she raised $82 million over those four days. Even more importantly, she signed up 200,000 volunteers.
And that’s where this thing will end up. Ad spending is a tangible hard number people can look at, but no one’s mind is being changed by what they see on a TV they’re not even watching that much anymore. Millions more are being poured into digital, which might be more useful in targeting harder-to-reach demographics. But volunteers doing the hard work of democracy?
It’s a lot harder to quantify postcards written, doors knocked, phone calls made, and friend-to-colleague-to-family conversations in one’s own social circles convincing reluctant voters to both turn out, and to vote for Harris and the rest of the Democratic ticket on their ballot.
So yes, it’s fun to see Trump’s obvious difficulty in staying competitive, but if ad spending was determinative, Democrats would’ve won the White House in 2016. This thing will be won on the ground.
Please donate $10 or whatever you can to ensure Kamala Harris holds the White House!
