Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Trump Campaign Trails in Funding
The Trump campaign was supposed to have a massive financial advantage in this election season. With an alleged billionaire able to write himself a check and with unlimited corporate donations thanks to the Citizens United decision, the president's re-election bid was supposed to swamp the Democrats with a tsunami of funding. Instead, the campaign has spend a billion or so dollars to be almost 10 points behind Joe Biden. In the last two weeks, they are going to be outspent, and that is having effects on where they spend what they do have.
The re-election campaign has about $63 million dollars in the bank. The Biden-Harris ticket has $177 million. Add in the party committees that spend for the campaign, and it gets worse for the president. The New York Times calcuated, "Mr. Trump's campaign and its shared committees with the R.N.C. had $251.4 million entering October, compared with the $432 million that Mr. Biden"s campaign and its joint accounts with the Democratic National Committee had in the bank."
Part of the problem for the Republicans is a bloated fund-raising system. Simply put, they are inefficient relative to the Democrats' efforts. The paper added, "The two joint Trump committees with the R.N.C. spent $190.8 million in July, August and September to raise $355.2 million. The Biden campaign spent less than half as much on fund-raising from its two joint operations with the Democratic Party ($82.4 million) and yet raised far more, $457 million, during that same period."
Politico observes that former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been spending his pledged $100 million, and it is forcing the Trump campaign to respond, focusing on Florida and other Sun Belt states. The re-election campaign has had to put another $7 million into Florida, $6 million into Georgia and almost $6 million into Arizona. These are states that Mr. Trump won in 2016.
To adjust for this, the campaign has had to reduce its spending elsewhere. Politico explained, "Trump also decreased planned spending by nearly $13 million in Ohio, more than $6 million in Minnesota and nearly $3 million in Wisconsin, reducing his advertising footprint in the region."
This clearly will have an effect, and in places, it already has. Former Republican Congressman Phil English said, "The Democrats are literally flooding everything with anti-Trump and pro-Biden advertising. It''s a concern. We're definitely seeing seniors reacting to the coronavirus here, and the steady messaging from Democrats over how the Trump administration has handled coronavirus has moved a lot of people."
Dollars do not automatically turn into votes. Back in 1980, former Governor John Connally ran for president spending $11 million dollars and winning exactly one delegate to the national convention. However, a political campaign with money to spend is in a much different position than one that is not. Here, the Biden-Harris ticket is in better shape.
Florida is important because, without it, there is almost no way the president can win re-election. The Democrats do not need to win it to take the White House. In 2016, the Trump team won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin for a total of 46 of his 306 electoral votes. If he loses Florida's 29 and just one of those three (or Arizona, Georgia or North Calorina), he cannot get to the 270 needed. Yet if the Biden-Harris ticket loses Florida while carrying the three Great Lakes states, the 279 is enough.
The added problem for the president is early voting. It means that advertising spending needs to start giving way to Get Out the Vote. Yet being outspent on ads will affect the GOTV efforts. The president can still win, but the odds are lengthening.
© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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