It is hard to keep track of political fundraising, in part because money goes into a number of different pockets: the campaigns themselves; PACs that spend on behalf of candidates; the Republican and Democratic Congressional and Senatorial committees; and the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee. The parties crow whenever they are ahead with regard to any of these buckets, but whether they are raising more money overall is another story. My experience is that in any contested race, the Democrat will have more money spent on his behalf than the Republican. But maybe my perspective is influenced by living in Minnesota, where the ratio is generally three or four to one on behalf of the Democrat.
So I take these numbers with a large grain of salt. Still, it can’t be a bad thing that the RNC, so far this cycle, is doing a great deal better than the DNC. These numbers are from a GOP communications staffer:
* The DNC has spent more money than it has raised this year.
* “The biggest nightmare Perez ever possibly imagined.”
* DNC takes out $10 million credit line.
Conversely:
* Trump campaign rakes in stunning $25M in single day for re-election launch.
* RNC to report record $14.6M fundraising haul in May.
Also, so far in 2019 Republican small donors have significantly outnumbered Democratic small donors.
This graphic sums it up:
How much do these numbers mean? I don’t know. Maybe Democratic donors are holding back until they see who their presidential nominee is. Maybe hard-core leftists–a large part of the Democrats’ constituency–are still mad at the DNC about handing the 2016 nomination to Hillary Clinton. Maybe they are just dumping their money into different pockets. I assume that by November 2020, the Democrats will have more money to spend than the GOP. Nevertheless, it can’t be bad for the RNC to be doing so much better than its Democratic counterpart at this stage of the race.
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