Many major Republican donors have begged their party's establishment to cut Donald Trump loose and focus instead on saving GOP candidates downballot for many months now, but not only have Republican leaders refused to engage in this ultimate act of triage, the very opposite has happened. According to an analysis from Politico, Democrats are set to badly outspend Republicans on TV ads during the final month in the eight most competitive Senate races, with Team Blue planning to spend $81 million versus just $65 million for the GOP.
What's more, Democrats have more money reserved in seven of those eight races, as you can see in the table below:
| State |
Democratic |
Republican |
| Florida |
$4.2 million |
$9.6 million |
| Indiana |
$7.0 million |
$4.3 million |
| Missouri |
$8.1 million |
$6.4 million |
| Nevada |
$12.5 million |
$12.2 million |
| New Hampshire |
$15.8 million |
$12.3 million |
| North Carolina |
$11.9 million |
$9.3 million |
| Pennsylvania |
$17.2 million |
$8.5 million |
| Wisconsin |
$4.0 million |
$1.9 million |
| Total: |
$80.7 million |
$64.5 million |
Republicans spent lots of money early, hoping to pound their opponents into oblivion before they could recover. For the most part, that didn’t work, and now Democrats have a golden opportunity to turn Trump’s last-minute implosion to their advantage. Indeed, they already are in place in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire—tossup contests that could wind up tilting in the Democratic direction with a stubby orange finger on the scale.
The GOP is, of course, scrabbling to find more money, but with Trump causing serious dysphoria throughout the ranks of big-time donors, that won’t be as easy as it’s usually been in the past. In fact, to excuse the party’s woeful finances, one NRSC spokesman resorted to a form of loserspeak so pitiful we don’t even have a category for it:
“For the last two years all we heard from Harry Reid is how Republicans were outspending them. Breaking news folks, Democrats were lying and have trouble counting,” NRSC spokeswoman Andrea Bozek said.
It’s obviously a lot easier to count your money when you have so much less of it!
Let’s make the gap even wider Please give $1 to each of our top Senate candidates today.
