APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – This week, Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign announced it has raised over $1 billion since Harris entered the 2024 presidential race in July.
“Obviously money, especially in America, money is the measure of enthusiasm,” says Lawrence University history professor Jerald Podair. “If you’re enthusiastic about a candidate, you are much more likely to donate, so this fundraising effort — and you have to recall we are living in an age of inflation — it’s a benchmark of voter enthusiasm.”
Experts say the $1 billion number is historic and unique because of how and when Harris entered the presidential race.
Money, Podair adds, is vital to any campaign, and a majority of it goes to one thing: political advertising.
“For the most part, they’ve got to get on TV, on the media. If you don’t control the media during a campaign, you don’t control the message and you allow your opponent to define you,” he says.
To give you an idea of how much money goes toward TV advertising, just on WLUK FOX 11 and our sister station CW14 alone, former President Donald Trump has spent $1,058,630 on campaign ads so far this year. Harris has spent $1,458,695.
In 2020, Trump and the RNC spent $555,226 on political ads on WLUK and CW14, while President Joe Biden spent nearly three times as much at $1,476,318.
Those numbers reflect just one TV station, in one market, in one state.
WLUK’s sales department estimates between WLUK and its competing stations, just in Green Bay, the two candidates have likely spent around $8 million total. That number is undoubtedly higher in cities like Madison and Milwaukee.
While TV advertising is the biggest slice of the fundraised money pie, the smaller slices go to paying campaign staff in every state, identifying voters and working to actually get them out to vote.
“You need a certain amount of money to get on media, get your people to the polls, and this particular election, I think, will boil down to which party will get their voters to the polls most successfully. Because as we know, there is a very small number of undecided voters left in this campaign,” Podair says.
The actual process of getting out the vote, registering your voters, identifying your voters registering your voters, and actually getting them to vote, that’s where the money is going here.
While Harris has a more than $400 million fundraising lead over Trump, Podair says money doesn’t always equate to an election win.
“In 2016, Donald Trump was outspent — and outspent significantly — by Hillary Clinton. He was also out organized by Hillary Clinton, I think that’s fair to say. . . but generally, the Trump campaign was outspent, outorganized and yet they won,” Podair says.
“It’s interesting that despite the fundraising records, despite a clear victory in the debate, despite a very successful Democratic National Convention, the poll numbers have not moved all that much in the last month,” Podair says. “The numbers are starting to narrow, despite these massive fundraising victories for Harris.”
And once those campaigns have identified all their supporters?
“In other words, you squeezed all the juice, all the water out of the sponge, that’s it. It’s dry. You can spend money after that but it’s probably not going to do all that much good,” Podair says.
All in all, money is an incredibly helpful tool for campaigns to see success and reach their supporters and undecided voters. Podair says at this point, it’s likely those undecided voters will be deciding the 2024 election.
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