Morning Digest: The Democrats' massive fundraising edge is bigger than ever

They're outspending Republicans 2-to-1, but that only tells half the story

Arizona Democrat Amish Shah, who is looking to unseat Republican Rep. Dave Schweikert in the state’s 1st Congressional District, was one of the top fundraisers in the country in the third quarter of 2024. (credit: Amish Shah Facebook)

Leading Off

Fundraising

Democrats are swamping Republicans in the money race to a degree unheard of even by the extreme standards of recent elections, according to new fundraising data for the House and the Senate compiled by The Downballot.

During the third quarter of the year, Democratic candidates collectively raised $452 million dollars, almost twice as much as the $235 million brought in by their GOP rivals. Spending was just as lopsided, with Democrats pouring in $513 million, versus $264 million for Republicans.

And Democrats were likewise far better equipped for the final stretch of the campaign: As of Sept. 30, they together had stockpiled $504 million in their coffers, while their opponents had a far smaller $385 million war chest to draw on. (Numbers from two independent senators who caucus with the Democrats, Maine's Angus King and Vermont's Bernie Sanders, are included in the Democratic totals.)

All told, Democrats raised 66% of all donor dollars given to major-party congressional candidates in the third quarter, with just 34% going to Republicans. That massive edge is even bigger than the already considerable advantages Democrats have enjoyed in recent elections.

Four years ago, during the last presidential election cycle, Democrats outraised Republicans by a 63-37 margin en route to flipping the Senate (and the White House). Two years later, that lead narrowed to a 60-40 spread, but Democrats still defied historical trends by increasing their majority in the Senate and losing the House by a much narrower margin than nearly everyone had predicted.

Money alone, of course, cannot win elections, but the GOP's enormous deficit has forced Republicans to adopt sub-optimal tactics as they try to avoid getting drowned out.

On the Senate side in particular, the NRSC stopped engaging in traditional spending weeks ago and instead switched to running cheaper "hybrid" ads, though that approach brings with it considerable drawbacks. House Republicans also appear to be making increased use of these ads, which can require narrators to waste precious seconds of airtime on awkward circumlocutions to comply with campaign finance laws.

The GOP's cash shortfall has even helped bring additional races in red states online as Republicans scramble to keep up, particularly in Texas and Nebraska. (The totals above don't include independent Dan Osborn, whose third-quarter haul outpaced Republican Sen. Deb Fischer's $3.2 million to $915,000.)

And as the final days tick down, we may even see some races come off the board if Republicans lack the necessary resources and have to start the unwelcome process of triage.

None of this is to say Democrats should feel content or confident. Polling in many races remains extremely tight, and even in 2020, reality fell well short of expectations despite their enormous financial advantage. But all things being equal, every political party would rather be flush than strapped heading into a critical Election Day.

Senate

NE-Sen-A

Republican Sen. Deb Fischer is hoping that her new ad featuring Donald Trump will help her finally establish a dominant lead in a race that, as yet another one of her internal polls shows, remains unexpectedly competitive.

"His name is Dan Osborn and he's a radical-left person," Trump tells the audience about the Nebraska independent opposing Fischer. Trump, seated on his private plane, continues by comparing Osborn to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and asserts, "We want someone that's going to be strong, powerful, and great for our country, and it's not going to be Dan Osborn."

Trump himself does not mention Fischer, but her campaign also shared a new survey from Torchlight Strategies that shows her outpacing Osborn 51-45, which matches her 48-42 margin in an internal poll from the same pollster she released just days earlier. That's not the only thing that remains the same: Torchlight's memo contains an identical sentence arguing that "proper funding" will "put this race to bed."

House

AZ-02

Noble Predictive Insights' new poll for Inside Elections unexpectedly finds freshman Republican Rep. Eli Crane deadlocked 42-42 against his Democratic foe, former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez, in Arizona's 2nd District, a conservative constituency that major outside groups have not spent any money in.

According to Noble, voters in this rural district in northeastern Arizona are apparently amenable to splitting their tickets this year. While Donald Trump's 50-43 advantage here is almost identical to his 2020 showing, respondents favor Democratic Senate hopeful Ruben Gallego 48-43 over Republican Kari Lake.

Crane, a Navy SEAL veteran and ardent election conspiracy theorist, challenged Democratic Rep. Tom O'Halleran last cycle in a district that became considerably more Republican following redistricting. Outside groups on both sides spent heavily here despite O'Halleran's shaky prospects, but Crane decisively prevailed 54-46.

Crane's win came on the same day that Nez unexpectedly lost his bid to remain president of the Navajo Nation to fellow Democrat Buu Nygren, a result he attributed to his "pretty tough" response to the COVID pandemic. The following year, Nez launched a campaign against Crane weeks after the Republican voted to end Kevin McCarthy's speakership, arguing he could pull off an upset "because I am able to work both sides of the aisle."

For much of this year, though, it looked like McCarthy's primary "revenge tour" would be a much larger obstacle to Crane's reelection than Nez. The congressman, however, instead turned in an 81-19 landslide victory against former Yavapai County Supervisor Jack Smith, who had little financial support despite McCarthy's desire to oust Republicans who had voted to oust him.

Nez, by contrast, has tapped into the grassroots donor excitement that's powered Democratic candidates up and down the ballot this year. He outraised Crane $2.6 million to $1.7 million during the most recent fundraising quarter, though the incumbent still ended September with a $1.5 million to $1.1 million cash-on-hand advantage.

Nez has been making use of his monetary influx to get his name out. Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin reports that he's spent $1.4 million on ads since last month, but Crane doesn't seem particularly worried, Rubashkin writes that he's only put $270,000 toward commercials. 

VA-07

"Derrick Anderson was caught using a fake wife and kids for his campaign," intones the narrator in a memorable new ad from the pro-Democratic House Majority PAC that hammers the Virginia Republican over one of the strangest political stories this year.

The audience in HMP's ad watches an actor playing Anderson hang out with cardboard cutouts as he's depicted throwing a frisbee at his cardboard "daughter" that she naturally can't catch, trying to shove food into another cutout's flat mouth, and cheating at Monopoly when no one else will take their turn.

All the while, the narrator tells viewers that Anderson is trying to "hide that he's another extreme MAGA politician" whose allies "would let the government track pregnancies and prosecute women who miscarry."

The ad lampoons a recent New York Times article that reported that Anderson, who is engaged and does not have children, had distributed campaign footage of him seated "at the dinner table in a family-like tableau" with a woman and her three daughters—none of whom are part of his family. Rather, the paper explained, the four were "the wife and children of a longtime friend."

In his quest to flip the open 7th District in Northern Virginia, Anderson faces Democrat Eugene Vindman, who was the top fundraiser among all House hopefuls in the third quarter by a massive margin. Vindman raised an astonishing $6.5 million, far outpacing the next-closest candidate, Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, who brought in $3.8 million.

Anderson, meanwhile, took in $1.1 million during the same timeframe—a haul that once would have seemed enormous but is now almost routine. (In the third quarter, 102 House candidates raised more than $1 million, 69 of them Democrats.) That gulf allowed Vindman to outspend his rival more than 10-to-1 over the last three months, $5.8 million to just $540,000.

Anderson's allies, though, have been trying to narrow the gap: Third-party groups have spent $2.6 million on his behalf since the June primary, compared to $1.4 million from HMP and other pro-Vindman outfits.

VA-10

Democrat Suhas Subramanyam announced this week that he has the endorsement of Barbara Comstock, who notably represented the previous version of Virginia's 10th District as a Republican.

Subramanyam is campaigning to succeed Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton, who is retiring due to the worsening symptoms of a neurodegenerative disease, in a once-competitive Northern Virginia constituency that became a blue bastion during the Trump era.

Until a few years ago, though, almost no one would have imagined that Comstock, who was one of the party's most formidable opposition researchers in the 1990s and a leading attorney in George W. Bush's Department of Justice the following decade, would join so many of her old constituents in voting Democratic. One well-known Democratic politico would be particularly surprised.

"If she wins, she will no doubt practice the same politics of personal destruction she and her ilk practiced in the Clinton days," former Bill Clinton adviser Paul Begala told Politico in 2014, during Comstock's successful bid to join Congress. He added that she had "really almost sick, sort of stalker-like obsession with President Clinton."

Comstock, who declared during that campaign that "[w]e need to get to the bottom of the truth in Benghazi," seemed ready to validate Begala's worst fears. However, her promising career in elective office ended early when the 2018 blue wave helped propel Wexton to a double-digit victory.

While Comstock initially faded from public view after that defeat, she attracted attention again in 2021 when she published a New York Times piece titled, "My Fellow Republicans, Stop Fearing This Dangerous and Diminished Man." And unlike so many other Republicans who have denounced Donald Trump over the years only to come groveling back, Comstock went on to endorse Kamala Harris this summer.

Subramanyam faces Republican Mike Clancy in a race that, despite early speculation to the contrary, has not been competitive. Subramanyam would be both Virginia's first Indian American and Hindu member of Congress.

Other Races

WA Land Commissioner

Elway Research shows Democrat Dave Upthegrove leading Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler 41-35 in the first poll we've seen of the general election for the post of land commissioner, an office that Washington Democrats almost lost in the August top-two primary. This survey, conducted for Cascade PBS, also shows Kamala Harris carrying the Evergreen State 57-32, which makes the former GOP congresswoman's task all the more difficult.

While Herrera Beutler led in the first round of voting, it took more than a month to learn that Upthegrove had earned a spot in the general election by outpacing Republican Sue Kuehl Pederson by all of 49 votes.

The state GOP tried to invalidate that result by filing a longshot lawsuit asking that several thousand votes in King County, which is the state's biggest and bluest county, be discarded. There have been no public developments since then, however, and ballots with Upthegrove's name on them are now being mailed out.

Poll Pile

• AZ-Sen: Morning Consult: Ruben Gallego (D): 52, Kari Lake (R): 40 (49-48 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 53-39 Gallego)

• AZ-Sen: YouGov for CBS: Gallego (D): 54, Lake (R): 45 (51-48 Trump) (May: 49-36 Gallego)

• MD-Sen: Morning Consult: Angela Alsobrooks (D): 51, Larry Hogan (R): 38 (64-31 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 50-39 Alsobrooks)

• MI-Sen: Mitchell Research & Communications for MIRS and Michigan News Source: Elissa Slotkin (D): 45, Mike Rogers (R): 40 (47-47 presidential tie) (late Sept.: 49-44 Slotkin)

• MI-Sen: Morning Consult: Slotkin (D): 48, Rogers (R): 41 (49-47 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 51-37 Slotkin)

• MI-Sen: RMG Research for the Napolitan Institute: Slotkin (D): 49, Rogers (R): 45 (49-49 presidential tie) (late Sept.: 49-43 Slotkin)

• NV-Sen: Morning Consult: Jacky Rosen (D-inc): 52, Sam Brown (R): 37 (49-45 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 52-39 Rosen)

• OH-Sen: Morning Consult: Bernie Moreno (R): 47, Sherrod Brown (D-inc): 46 (52-45 Trump) (mid-Sept.: 46-44 Brown)

• OH-Sen: Fabrizio, Lee & Associates (R) for Moreno: Moreno (R): 47, Brown (D-inc): 44

• PA-Sen: YouGov for UMass Lowell: Bob Casey (D-inc): 48, Dave McCormick (R): 39 (46-45 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 47-38 Casey)

• PA-Sen: Morning Consult: Casey (D-inc): 49, McCormick (R): 41 (49-48 Harris) (mid-Sept.: 48-43 Casey)

• TX-Sen: Morning Consult: Ted Cruz (R-inc): 46, Colin Allred (D): 45 (50-46 Trump) (mid-Sept.: 45-44 Allred)

• WI-Sen: Morning Consult: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 44 (48-47 Trump) (mid-Sept.: 50-43 Baldwin)

• WI-Sen: RMG Research: Baldwin (D-inc): 50, Hovde (R): 47 (50-49 Trump) (late Sept.: 51-45 Baldwin)

• NC-Gov: Morning Consult: Josh Stein (D): 54, Mark Robinson (R): 32 (49-48 Trump) (mid-Sept.: 50-37 Stein)

• NC-Gov: Cygnal (R) for the Carolina Journal: Stein (D): 49, Robinson (R): 36 (47-47 presidential tie) (mid-Sept.: 46-39 Stein)

• NH-Gov: YouGov for UMass Lowell: Kelly Ayotte (R): 42, Joyce Craig (D): 41 (50-41 Harris)

• UT-Gov: Noble Predictive Insights: Spencer Cox (R-inc): 49, Brian King (D): 23, Phil Lyman (write-in): 5 (54-36 Trump)

• WA-Gov: SurveyUSA for the Seattle Times, KING 5, and the University of Washington: Bob Ferguson (D): 50, Dave Reichert (R): 34 (57-35 Harris) 

• WA-Gov: Elway Research for Cascade PBS: Ferguson (D): 51, Reichert (R): 37 (57-32 Harris) (early Sept.: 50-39 Ferguson)

• CA-45: American Viewpoint (R) for Michelle Steel and the NRCC: Michelle Steel (R-inc): 45, Derek Tran (D): 41 (45-41 Harris)

• NY-19: Garin-Hart-Yang (D) for Josh Riley: Josh Riley (D): 48, Marc Molinaro (R-inc): 45 (49-48 Harris)

• AZ Ballot: YouGov for CBS: Abortion amendment: Yes: 52, No: 33

• WA Ballot: Elway: repeal law to phase out natural gas in homes: Yes: 51, No: 28 (early Sept.: 47-29 Yes)

• WA Ballot: Elway: repeal capital gains tax: No: 56, Yes: 29 (early Sept.: 52-30 No)

• WA Ballot: Elway: bar carbon trading: No: 46, Yes: 31 (early Sept.: 46-30 No)

• WA Ballot: Elway: allow employees to opt out of long-term healthcare coverage: Yes: 45, No: 33 (early Sept.: 39-33 Yes)

• NC Supreme Court: Cygnal (R): Jefferson Griffin (R): 45, Allison Riggs (D-inc): 43 (mid-Sept.: 44-41 Riggs)

• NC-AG: Cygnal (R): Jeff Jackson (D): 46, Dan Bishop (R): 43 (mid-Sept.: 45-43 Jackson)

• NC Superintendent of Public Instruction: Cygnal (R): Mo Green (D): 46, Michele Morrow (R): 43 (mid-Sept.: 43-39 Green)

Ad Roundup

• AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D); Kari Lake (R) and the NRSC - anti-Gallego

• MT-Sen: Tim Sheehy (R) - anti-Jon Tester (D-inc) (here and here)

• PA-Sen: WinSenate - anti-Dave McCormick (R) (here and here)

• TX-Sen: Win It Back PAC (Club for Growth affiliate) - anti-Colin Allred (D) (in Spanish)

• WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc) - anti-Eric Hovde (R)

• NH-Gov: Kelly Ayotte (R); New Hampshire Democratic Party - anti-Ayotte

• CA-41: Will Rollins (D) - anti-Ken Calvert (R-inc)

• MD-06: Neil Parrott (R) - anti-April McClain Delaney (D)

• NH-01: Russell Prescott (R)

• NY-17: Mike Lawler (R-inc); CLF - anti-Mondaire Jones (D)

• OH-09: CLF - anti-Marcy Kaptur (D-inc)

• PA-17: Chris DeLuzio (D-inc) and the DCCC

• FL Ballot: Smart & Safe Florida - pro-marijuana amendment

• NE Ballot: Created Equal: Anti-abortion rights amendment/pro-abortion restrictions amendment

• NC Superintendent of Public Instruction: Mo Green (D) - anti-Michele Morrow (R)