How the Democrats spent $1 billion and still lost
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. She took in more than $1.2 billion in contributions. Her donors numbered in the millions, including many new to the political process.
But in the end, it didn’t matter. Vice President Kamala Harris lost her bid for the White House on Wednesday despite spending most of the funds on an expansive ground operation, staffing and a flood of ads. President-elect Donald Trump won a second term with half of what Harris’s campaign spent.
Harris’s fundraising dominance, which her campaign had touted, wasn’t enough to overcome political headwinds, including shifts in demographic support and an economic malaise that left much of the electorate soured on the Biden administration in which she served. Harris only started her campaign after President Biden stepped aside on July 21. The morning after Biden dropped out, her campaign raised about $50 million in grassroots donations.
Within a week, her campaign had $200 million as Democratic donors went wild for her whirlwind bid for the presidency, invigorated by her sudden elevation to the top of the ticket. Her campaign allocated money for ads highlighting controversial comments by Trump, especially in swing states, and more than $36 million on in-person and digital outreach. But it didn’t convince a swath of working-class voters, Hispanics and white men that she was better than another four years of Trump.
She underperformed with those groups compared with Biden in 2020, according to data from AP VoteCast. The Harris campaign—her principal committee, associated fundraising committee and the Democratic National Committee—spent more than $654.6 million on ads from when she took over on July 22 through Election Day. During that period, Trump spent $378.9
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