Donald Trump has all but erased the enormous fundraising advantage that President Biden once had in his 2024 reelection bid, thanks to the fundraising surge that followed his conviction in the first criminal trial of a former and current president.
In May, for the second month in a row, the former president and the RNC significantly outraised Biden and the DNC, and the president’s massive financial advantage over Trump appears to have evaporated.
The Biden campaign had led the fundraising race for months, allowing it to drown out Trump’s rhetoric on the radio and mount an impressive ground game compared with the Trump campaign’s much more modest base.
But Trump’s fundraising surge since winning the Republican nomination in early March and momentum since his conviction on 34 felony counts in a New York City trial could allow him to match Biden in the advertising war and mount a major ground operation.
Biden raises huge amount of money in May, but still falls far short of Trump
Donald Trump arrives at Trump Tower on Thursday, May 30, 2024, after being convicted of 34 counts of first-degree falsifying business records. (Felipe Ramares for Fox News Digital)
According to AdImpact, a major national ad tracking company, the Biden campaign has spent more than $65 million to air ads supporting the president’s reelection on television, while the Trump campaign has not yet begun buying ads for the general election.
But Biden’s lead in the advertising wars may soon be under threat. Make America Great Again (MAGA), a leading super PAC backing former President Biden, announced a $100 million advertising offensive this summer. The group’s announcement came on the heels of securing a staggering $50 million donation from conservative banking heir Timothy Mellon.
As for the ground campaign, the Biden campaign said Thursday it had deployed 200 campaign offices and 1,000 staff in key battleground states that could determine the 2024 reelection.
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“With just over four months until the election, Donald Trump will not be able to match the infrastructure in our battleground states if he tried,” Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states manager, said in a statement.
“The Trump campaign is desperate to claim that the lack of infrastructure is ‘strategic,’ but at the end of the day, Donald Trump cannot make up for lost time, and you can’t win a campaign you can’t see,” Kanninen argued.
President Biden’s reelection campaign on Wednesday slammed MSNBC and CNN for ignoring the “Black Voters for Biden-Harris” rally in Philadelphia. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, disputed this, saying polls in key battleground states showed Trump with a slight lead.
“What Biden can leverage is an additional 1,000 votes in states like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, because Biden lost to President Trump in all of those states!” Miller argued.
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The Trump campaign has said it and the Republican National Committee have offices in key battleground states but has not provided specific numbers. It has repeatedly said its paid staff and volunteer operations are “growing every day.”
But the Trump campaign has stressed in recent months that it is building a “leaner” operation than it did in 2020, when Trump, then the White House incumbent, sought reelection. It is leaning on allied groups to beef up its local operations, and plans to cut offices and staff and to outsource some of it.
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump walks to the podium during a campaign event in Racine, Wisconsin, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (Associated Press/Jeffrey Phelps) (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)
“Trump is certainly going to have to catch up in some ways to match the infrastructure that Biden has built,” Greg Moore, regional director for Americans for Prosperity, a leading conservative group, told Fox News.
But Moore, a longtime veteran of the group’s powerful grassroots and on-the-ground efforts, said there’s still “a tremendous opportunity for the Trump campaign to grow its base and start focusing on building a real, authentic grassroots strategy.”
Moore cited the Trump campaign as an example, saying, “There’s no question that there is a tremendous amount of energy among his supporters. Trump supporters are more enthusiastic than Biden supporters. So while Biden may have the advantage in terms of more staff, Trump has the advantage in recruiting real volunteers.”
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