If the 2024 election cycle is proving one thing, it’s that nothing sells like uncertainty – except maybe chaos.
The election, which in the last three months alone has seen two assassination attempts and an incumbent president forced out by his own party, is polling ‘too close to call’ in every battleground state.
And that has added up to a record $15.9 billion-plus in total campaign donations, the non-profit OpenSecrets.org reported.
‘Whoever runs against Donald Trump will have endless money,’ said Louis Perron, a political consultant based in Switzerland. He said for many campaign donors, ‘the driver is emotional.’
With both campaigns hauling in cash, and well-funded groups eager to try to sway the outcome, there are plenty of incentives to spend big.
‘It’s because the stakes are so high and because it is close,’ the author of Beat the Incumbent told DailyMail.com.
For context, that near $16 billion could buy three of the four teams vying for the World Series – the Yankees ($7.55B), Dodgers ($5.45B) and Mets ($3B), based on Forbes’ 2024 valuations.
It could also buy 36,000 rides into space on Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic at about $450,000 a ride, or five Big Macs with fries and a Coke for every American.
Even the eye-popping $1 billion that Vice President Kamala Harris raised since her party forced President Joe Biden to bow out in July – itself believed to be a record – is just a fraction of the staggering total that Republicans and Democrats are expected to rake in and spend before Nov. 5.
Most of that haul will be spent on a top-of-ticket race that is still being called a toss-up with less than three weeks to go before Election Day.
The combined spending includes tons of cash from deep-pocketed Super PACs and other outside groups pouring funds into both the Trump versus Harris race and down-ballot congressional contests – with control of the White House, the House and the Senate all up for grabs.
Harris’ fundraising has shown her ability to fire up grassroots support after replacing a sinking President Joe Biden in July.
The Democrat’s war chest swelled after senior party figures, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, forced Biden to end his run.
Trump, meanwhile, has seen his small individual donation take – less than $200 a piece – drop, forcing him to go to wealthy donors to try to make up the difference.
Small donors now make up less than a third of his haul, compared to nearly half in 2020.
But a crush of online fundraising from small donors and a series of big-money hauls from top campaign donors to candidates is only part of what’s paying for the spending binge anyway.
It is outside groups who are ‘spending more and more, and we’ve seen that cycle over cycle,’ OpenSecrets’ Brendan Glavin told DailyMail.com.
‘The rate of increase this cycle for the outside groups is really going through the roof,’ said Glavin, the group’s deputy research director.
Spending by outside groups not connected to the candidates’ campaigns, including on TV s, is already blowing away records.
That spend has topped $2.6 billion as of October 7, according to OpenSecrets data.
Conservative-leaning groups hold the edge there, led by the Make America Great Again PAC, which is separate from Trump’s campaign. It has plowed $239 million into the race.
The pro-Harris Future Forward PAC has spent $212 million.
So-called ‘dark money’ nonprofits who spend to influence elections do not have to disclose their donors under the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Spending is also pouring into congressional races, with both the House and Senate seen as up for grabs.
This year there are already three marquee Senate races that have topped $100 million, in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Montana. The Montana race, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is battling for survival, could cost up to $250 million – or $250 for each of the state’s 1 million residents, according to Bloomberg News.
A series of megadonors are also on a campaign spending spree, donating 7 percent of all money raised, or $599 million, according to OpenSecrets data.
The top five megadonors are all backing Republicans in 2024.
Trump recently appeared on stage with Elon Musk in Butler, Pennsylvania. The world’s richest man has said he’s kicking in $45 million per month to a pro-Trump America PAC, which was formed in June.
Although campaigns prefer to highlight their small-dollar donors, those account for just 16 percent of all contributions for the cycle, according to OpenSecrets.
That is a drop from 22 percent in 2020.
But although 2024 spending is set to shatter the dollar record, 2020 could still reign supreme, in part because the inflation that is proving to be a top campaign issue is also playing out in campaign spending.
The record-shattering 2020 fundraising totals were $15.1 billion. But when adjusted for inflation just four years later, that amounts to $18.3 billion in current dollars.
The 2020 race featured battling billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer seeing part of their fortunes go up in smoke with a combined $1.4 billion in campaign spending in their losing bids.
The 2016 election that got Trump into office saw a comparatively paltry total of $8.5 billion in campaign spending, adjusted for inflation in 2024 dollars.
For the last reporting period, Harris and Democrats were expected to have raised $1 billion, while Trump and Republicans raised $430 million. Harris and the Democrats had $404 million in the bank, with Trump and the Republicans having $283 million.
Public disclosures reveal where the campaigns are spending their hauls. The Harris campaign is cutting most of the big checks on media buys, Federal Elections Commission data reveal.
Most of it is funding brutal TV air wars in the battleground states. The Trump camp is pouring funds into its own media purchases, plus direct mail to contact voters at home.