Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: It's the final two months of the twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: US presidential race, and that means candidates are pushing hard
Speaker 2: to fill their campaign coffers for a crucial and expensive push.
Speaker 2: There is too much at stake, so let's not fall
Speaker 2: short on our resources if.
Speaker 1: You can't afford. We have to win this. We're going
Speaker 1: to take back our country. We're going to make America
Speaker 1: great again.
Speaker 2: In early August, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris's campaigns released
Speaker 2: fundraising numbers. One of them had a clear lead.
Speaker 3: Harris has about three hundred and seventy seven million dollars
Speaker 3: in the bank. Trump has about three hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: seven million.
Speaker 2: Laura Davison covers money and politics for Bloomberg News.
Speaker 3: In the first eleven days of Harris's campaign, basically from
Speaker 3: the day that Biden dropped out till the end of July,
Speaker 3: she attracted more unique donors than Biden did during the
Speaker 3: entirety of his run, which was basically over a year.
Speaker 2: And Laura said, there's more good news for Harris if
Speaker 2: you take a closer look. The Trump campaign released its
Speaker 2: August numbers this week, and it spent thirty two million
Speaker 2: dollars more than it earned.
Speaker 3: But Harris, over the past six weeks that she's been
Speaker 3: in the race, she's been raising about twice as much
Speaker 3: money as Trump, so she's bringing in it a lot
Speaker 3: faster while both campaigns are spending at about the same rate.
Speaker 2: That sort of influx in money is often a sign
Speaker 2: of momentum, which is key in the final sprint of
Speaker 2: campaign season. But with election day around the corner, does
Speaker 2: the money itself make a difference. Today on the show,
Speaker 2: Laura and I break down this pivotal money moment. We
Speaker 2: look at how the campaign's bank accounts stack up, how
Speaker 2: they might spend their money, and how much impact it
Speaker 2: could actually have at this point in the race.
Speaker 3: Two months, two months of spending.
Speaker 2: Let's go from Bloomberg's Washington Bureau. This is the Big
Speaker 2: Take DC Podcast. I'm Salaiah Mosen. Winning a presidential election
Speaker 2: isn't cheap, but in recent years, every campaign cycle has
Speaker 2: set a new record on spending. A lot of that
Speaker 2: spending is done by outside groups. But I wanted to
Speaker 2: understand why money matters when it comes to the campaigns themselves,
Speaker 2: So I asked Laura, how do campaigns spend their money.
Speaker 3: There's basically three big buckets where the money goes. One
Speaker 3: is staff, their campaign headquarters staff, but also field staff
Speaker 3: in all the swing states, helping organize volunteers, doing get
Speaker 3: out the vote effort, all those sorts of things. The
Speaker 3: second bucket is canvassing, so these are people who go
Speaker 3: door to door to get people to turn out to vote.
Speaker 3: So these are not necessarily people who are like full
Speaker 3: time campaign staff. These are other people who works I'm
Speaker 3: on a contract temporary basis. And then of course you
Speaker 3: need people to help organize them, give them the literature,
Speaker 3: give them the training to do that sort of on
Speaker 3: the ground effort.
Speaker 2: Those first two buckets make up what's known as a
Speaker 2: campaign's ground game, and Laura told me the two teams
Speaker 2: have taken very different approaches to this.
Speaker 3: The Biden campaign, which now the Hairs campaign, has been
Speaker 3: very diligent on getting field operations up and running. So
Speaker 3: they have offices across all of the major seven swing states.
Speaker 3: They've hired a bunch of staff, they have you know,
Speaker 3: different spokespeople for each of those states, so they are
Speaker 3: very much concentrated of having people on the ground. The
Speaker 3: Trump campaign has sort of really taken an opposite approach
Speaker 3: that is not really worth the time and money. They
Speaker 3: knew going into this race that they were going to
Speaker 3: probably raise less money than the Democrats were, so they
Speaker 3: were looking at, you know, what are ways that we
Speaker 3: can cut cost. Having all these offices, having all the
Speaker 3: staff is very expensive. So they said, look, this is
Speaker 3: not something we see as being as much of a
Speaker 3: priority for us.
Speaker 2: In the last few weeks since Harris took over the
Speaker 2: Democratic ticket, the Trump campaign seems to be rethinking its strategy.
Speaker 2: Laura Trump, who's the co chair of the Republican National
Speaker 2: Committee and Donald Trump's daughter in law, acknowledged this in
Speaker 2: an interview on Bloomberg TV last week.
Speaker 4: Well, listen, of course you have a different candidate, you
Speaker 4: do have to change your tactic to an extent. And
Speaker 4: we're looking at all the same polling as well, and
Speaker 4: we're making sure that where we need to kind of
Speaker 4: firm things up, we're going to allocate a little bit
Speaker 4: more money there. We're going to put more boots on
Speaker 4: the ground in those areas.
Speaker 3: They have done a couple things more as a symbolic gesture,
Speaker 3: So they've opened up an office in downtown Philadelphia, for example,
Speaker 3: a place that they're really trying to recruit black men
Speaker 3: to help support Trump's candidacy.
Speaker 2: When it comes to those first two buckets, staff and canvassing,
Speaker 2: it takes time for money to translate to go from
Speaker 2: sitting in a bank account to getting someone to cast
Speaker 2: a ballot. Money might give you the funds to pay staff,
Speaker 2: but you have to hire them and train them and
Speaker 2: then get them into the field before they can be effective.
Speaker 2: That puts more emphasis and more pressure on the third
Speaker 2: campaign spending bucket, one that can have a much faster impact. Advertising,
Speaker 2: and this is a huge expenditure. You know, the campaigns
Speaker 2: are spending millions of dollars a week, both on broadcast
Speaker 2: but also increasingly so on digital advertising, social media advertising,
Speaker 2: and also what we call connected TV. That's like all
Speaker 2: the streaming services, all the advertisements that go there. Everyone
Speaker 2: always says you have to spend money to make money.
Speaker 2: So how much does it cost to actually create and
Speaker 2: then distribute an ad?
Speaker 3: The expensive part is not the making of the ad,
Speaker 3: it is the distribution of it. In Michigan, for example,
Speaker 3: you could buy a thirty second local spot and non
Speaker 3: primetime for you know, a couple hundred dollars six hundred dollars,
Speaker 3: but you just want to blanket the airwaves so that
Speaker 3: you're reaching all the people.
Speaker 2: That single six hundred dollars ad spot can quickly balloon
Speaker 2: when you're airing it on multiple networks in multiple cities
Speaker 2: during multiple viewing times. And Laura says that for primetime
Speaker 2: ad slots, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: So you're basically wanting to spend as much as you
Speaker 3: can one so that people hear your candidate's name, but
Speaker 3: also so that you're competitor can't buy those spots. It
Speaker 3: is not out of the question that in a couple weeks,
Speaker 3: as we really get into the thick of the campaign,
Speaker 3: that a lot of the regular advertisers for TV, you know,
Speaker 3: car dealerships, personal injury lawyers, furniture stores, are not going
Speaker 3: to be able to buy ad spots because there's just
Speaker 3: so much political advertising flooding the waves. Wow, just blitzed,
Speaker 3: totally blitzed.
Speaker 2: In the past week, Trump's campaign spent nearly two million
Speaker 2: dollars to air a thirty second ad spot in North
Speaker 2: Carolina alone. It was an attack ad criticizing Harris on
Speaker 2: the economy, and it aired almost four thousand times across
Speaker 2: the state.
Speaker 1: At this point, the campaigns are going to be spending
Speaker 1: all of this money to try to win that two
Speaker 1: or three or four percent of the electorate that might
Speaker 1: swing a little bit back and forth.
Speaker 2: That's Michael Franz, co director of the Wesleyan Media Project,
Speaker 2: which tracks political ad trends.
Speaker 1: That sounds like not on big percentage, But if the
Speaker 1: Harris can campaign said, oh gosh, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: spend all that money for three percent, then they'd lose.
Speaker 1: So it becomes the difference between winning the White House
Speaker 1: and losing the White House. Whether you win those three
Speaker 1: or four percent, then it makes sense why you might
Speaker 1: spend three hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: Since Harris took over the Democratic ticket, Michael says her
Speaker 2: campaign seems to have shifted its advertising strategy from that
Speaker 2: of Biden.
Speaker 1: Since Biden dropped out, Harris spent like one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars on ads, which is a lot of money.
Speaker 1: She has also spent this has somewhat surprised us, a
Speaker 1: lot of money seventy or so million dollars in the
Speaker 1: last month on Facebook and Google based advertisements. Trump has
Speaker 1: always been known as the sort of digital type of candidate.
Speaker 1: He ran for president in twenty sixteen by tweeting he
Speaker 1: didn't spend a lot of money on TV ads, it
Speaker 1: seemed like he was running this rogue campaign. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, he's actually spending most of his money on
Speaker 1: ads on the.
Speaker 2: TV side, says. These strategy shifts could indicate that Harris
Speaker 2: is focused on targeting younger voters through digital platforms, and
Speaker 2: that Trump is targeting older voters and battleground states on
Speaker 2: TV stations with a fixed number of ad spots.
Speaker 1: And so if you were watching TV in a battleground
Speaker 1: state like Pennsylvania or something, or in Atlanta, you might
Speaker 1: actually see more Trump ads than Harris ads.
Speaker 2: So that's campaign money, how it's spent, and where you'll
Speaker 2: see the impacts. But how does outside spending help and
Speaker 2: sometimes hurt a candidate and how critical are the last
Speaker 2: few weeks leading up to the election across both types
Speaker 2: of spending that's coming up. When it comes to the
Speaker 2: presidential election, the biggest money isn't coming from the campaigns themselves.
Speaker 2: It's from outside groups known as packs and super packs,
Speaker 2: so a.
Speaker 3: Pack of political action committee. These are groups that are
Speaker 3: organized by the party or organized by a specific company,
Speaker 3: and basically they can raise money to then give to
Speaker 3: different candidates. But the real money maker and the big
Speaker 3: money raiser in campaigns are super packs. They don't have
Speaker 3: any sort of contribution limits, so people can give hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions of dollars to these groups if they want to.
Speaker 3: The key differential from a pack or from a campaign
Speaker 3: is that the super PACs can't coordinate with the candidates.
Speaker 3: They can't actually call up the campaign manager and say, hey,
Speaker 3: where do you want us to spend this money. Of course,
Speaker 3: there's all sorts of ways to get around this. Campaigns
Speaker 3: can come out and say, hey, look, wouldn't it be
Speaker 3: great if someone started spending a bunch of money for
Speaker 3: us in North Carolina, But they aren't supposed to legally
Speaker 3: actually call up the phone and talk with one another.
Speaker 2: Outside groups have already poured about half a billion dollars
Speaker 2: into the twenty twenty four presidential race. Campaigns can rely
Speaker 2: on packs to run ads, but these groups also need
Speaker 2: more money to buy those ads.
Speaker 3: Campaigns can buy the advertising at basically the lowest rate available.
Speaker 2: TV stations are required to give candidates the best price
Speaker 2: for an AD spot in that particular market and timeslot.
Speaker 3: If a superpack ise to go out and buy that
Speaker 3: exact same spot, they're paying somewhere between three and five
Speaker 3: times as much for that. So while they can raise
Speaker 3: a lot more money because there's no contribution limits, they're
Speaker 3: getting a lot less bang for their buck than the
Speaker 3: campaign is when they go out and spend that same money.
Speaker 2: During a primetime college football game in Atlanta last week,
Speaker 2: it costs the Harris campaign and estimated thirty one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars to air a thirty second ad spot, But for
Speaker 2: a pro Trump super pac to air an ad during
Speaker 2: a college football game in Atlanta, it costs around fourteen
Speaker 2: thousand dollars and that's just one TV station. These prices
Speaker 2: are only going to get higher as we get closer
Speaker 2: to election day. All this raises the question when campaigns
Speaker 2: put out an ad asking voters to donate, is that
Speaker 2: ad worth it. Michael Franz at the Wesleyan Media Center
Speaker 2: says that you have to think about the long game.
Speaker 1: You might be spending a dollar to raise two dollars,
Speaker 1: but then there's a longer term return for those investments
Speaker 1: because when you contribute, you're obviously giving the campaign your name,
Speaker 1: they're going to ask for your email, and now they've
Speaker 1: got your contact information, and so they can email you
Speaker 1: for free later to get more money. And so it
Speaker 1: might be the case that a you know, a five
Speaker 1: million dollar add by online returns six or seven million
Speaker 1: dollars in contributions, which doesn't seem like a lot of
Speaker 1: money move and beyond the purchase cost of the ads,
Speaker 1: But you've also got this contact list that you can
Speaker 1: then go back to and raise more money from.
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, that it's September fifty sixty days
Speaker 2: from the vote. Haven't most people made up their minds?
Speaker 2: Like why is now a time for these candidates to
Speaker 2: keep pushing ads out?
Speaker 3: Most people have made up their minds, But most people
Speaker 3: won't be deciding the election. It'll be you know, ten
Speaker 3: or twenty thousand people in some of these keys states,
Speaker 3: those persuadable voters. The other reason why, particularly if you
Speaker 3: live in a swing state, you're really going to start
Speaker 3: to see the advertising ramp up now is because a
Speaker 3: lot of people aren't paying attention to the presidential election.
Speaker 3: Labor Day is seen as the time that like people
Speaker 3: really start tuning in now is really crunch time.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to the fundraising gap between Harris
Speaker 2: and Trump, how much of a role could it play
Speaker 2: in swing states in the next two months.
Speaker 3: So the gap will matter in that the Harris campaign
Speaker 3: will probably have more leeway to buy whatever advertising they want,
Speaker 3: add whatever staff they need, hire whatever canvassers, and just
Speaker 3: have a little bit more flexibility. You know, money can't
Speaker 3: buy happiness, it can't buy election, but it can solve
Speaker 3: a lot of problems. When it comes to Trump, his
Speaker 3: campaign may not have quite the flexibility that the Harris
Speaker 3: campaign does, but he has a lot of support from
Speaker 3: outside groups.
Speaker 2: Groups like Elon Musk's Super Pac have been pouring money
Speaker 2: into critical states like North Carolina, And once the next
Speaker 2: president takes office, there will still be another looming question.
Speaker 2: Do donors who give big money get to shape policy positions?
Speaker 3: Sort of the history school answer should be, know that
Speaker 3: these things are very separate. But the answer is that yes,
Speaker 3: we do see people who are big donors, you know,
Speaker 3: end up in key roles in administrations or having some
Speaker 3: sway you know, having access to whoever becomes president. Kind
Speaker 3: of the key example is that you know, someone who's
Speaker 3: a key donor gets a really plumb ambassador post of
Speaker 3: getting to be the ambassador to France, you know, getting
Speaker 3: to have sort of a more ceremonial role. That's just
Speaker 3: sort of a fun job. But like in the Trump campaign,
Speaker 3: for example, you see Howard Lutnik with Cantor Fitzgerald. He's
Speaker 3: been a major fundraiser, He's hosted many events for Trump,
Speaker 3: He's given a lot of money. He is now the
Speaker 3: head of Trump's transition team. He's helping to shape policy.
Speaker 3: So even before you know the election is decided, key
Speaker 3: donors are already getting slotted into roles that could really
Speaker 3: help determine the shape of an administration.
Speaker 2: With Harrison Trump facing off for their first debate next week,
Speaker 2: we can expect to see a big fund raising push
Speaker 2: from both campaigns, and Laura says it's not just how
Speaker 2: much money they raise. We should be paying attention to
Speaker 2: how these campaigns talk about the money that's coming in.
Speaker 2: These numbers and how they talk about them sort of
Speaker 2: tells you where the energy is. When Harris first got
Speaker 2: into the race, her campaign was coming out every couple
Speaker 2: days saying, look, we've raised this many more million dollars
Speaker 2: and it came from this many givers signaling there. Look,
Speaker 2: we have a lot of small dollar donors. That shows
Speaker 2: the energy behind us. When the campaign doesn't.
Speaker 3: Talk about that, that's when you can tell that it's
Speaker 3: more from large dollar donors. That small dollar donor number
Speaker 3: can really be an indicator of how much enthusiasm there
Speaker 3: is behind a candidate.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to The Big Take DC podcast from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. I'm Salaiah Mosen. This episode was produced by
Speaker 2: Julia Press. It was mixed by Blake Maples. It was
Speaker 2: edited by Aaron Edwards and Wendy Benjaminson, who provides editorial
Speaker 2: direction with Elizabeth Ponso. The episode was fact checked by
Speaker 2: Alex Sugia. Our senior producers are kim Go d Olson
Speaker 2: and Naomi Shaven, who also edited this episode. Nicole Beemster
Speaker 2: Bower is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head
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