Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, national political reporters Ben Kamisar and Bridget Bowman break down the latest fundraising numbers weeks out from Election Day. Plus, chief political analyst Chuck Todd explains why there may not be a massive gap between the popular vote and the Electoral College results.
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GOP donors pour massive sums of cash into pro-Trump super PACs before Election Day
By Ben Kamisar
Republican megadonors are opening up their checkbooks — and not being shy about the number of zeros they write — to help former President Donald Trump and other Republicans as Vice President Kamala Harris’ fundraising operation breaks records.
Major pro-Trump super PACs pulled in more than $200 million from major GOP donors during the third fundraising quarter, according to new campaign finance filings. The notable names include: Miriam Adelson (the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and the wife of the late casino executive Sheldon Adelson), Tesla CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalists Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz, former Marvel Chairman Ike Perlmutter and shipping magnate Richard Uihlein.
Adelson gave $95 million to Preserve America, a super PAC she’s almost entirely funded after giving the group $5 million in the prior quarter. Preserve America has spent $97 million already on television and digital ads criticizing Harris.
Musk, who has been increasing his public political presence in recent weeks amid his full-throated endorsement of Trump, gave $75 million last quarter to America PAC, a group that’s spent more than $100 million to support Trump.
Right for America, another pro-Trump group, raised $28 million from July through September — with multimillion-dollar checks from Andreesen, Horowitz and Perlmutter as well as Perlmutter’s wife, Lara.
Uihlein, one of the most prolific Republican donors of the last decade, gave his outside group, Restoration PAC, another $49 million. The super PAC has spent heavily on the presidential race as well as on the Wisconsin Senate and Maine 2nd Congressional District campaigns.
The huge checks are just one piece of the campaign finance puzzle, as Tuesday’s deadline saw some groups file only quarterly disclosures. The two most prominent super PACs playing in the presidential race, the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. and the pro-Harris Future Forward, won’t file reports until the monthly disclosure deadline on Sunday, the same day Harris and Trump will file their campaign fundraising reports covering September.
💰More on the cash dash: Meanwhile, in the battle for Congress, Democrats are keeping up their torrid fundraising pace.
Bridget Bowman reports that on average, Democratic candidates raised more than twice as much money as their Republican counterparts from July through September in Senate and House races the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates as competitive. Democrats outraised Republicans in all 11 competitive Senate races and in all but one of the 26 “toss-up” House races.
In some cases, the gap was even wider. Three Senate Democratic candidates — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks and Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin — raised more than four times as much as their Republican opponents during that period.
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Republicans have been sounding the alarm about their candidates’ fundraising, particularly since Harris became the Democrats’ de facto presidential nominee. And they have tried to combat Democrats’ financial advantages by utilizing different avenues to stretch their candidates’ limited funds.
Why there may not be a big popular vote-Electoral College split this year
By Chuck Todd
There has been some analysis, chiefly led by The New York Times’ Nate Cohn, arguing that the possibility of a massive split between the popular vote and the Electoral College, which has been a big story in the last two presidential elections, may disappear this cycle.
In the most recent NBC News poll, our pollsters sorted the head-to-head ballot test by core Trump/GOP states, core Harris/Democratic states and then a dozen more closely contested states in the middle. Then, they compared the results this cycle with 2020 and 2016.
What’s interesting is how much smaller the Democratic lead is in “blue” states in 2024 compared with 2020 and 2016. In 2016, Trump lost the core Democratic states by 22 points, and in 2020, he lost them by 24 points. In this most recent poll, Trump was losing the core Democratic states by only 13 points.
Meanwhile, though Trump’s support grew some in the blue states, it has stayed stagnant in the red states and battleground states. In 2016, Trump won the core GOP states by 18 points, and in 2020, his margin in the red states was 16 points. In this most recent poll, it was also 16 points. And the battleground-state margin stood at 1 point all three times, moving only slightly between the parties.
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What does this all mean? If the polling trend holds and Trump improves in the blue states without winning any of them, the likelihood that the Electoral College winner (no matter who it is) will also carry the popular vote has increased.
Who knows what Trump’s blue-state arena tour over the next 10 days does to his support in those states, but one thing is for sure: If he wins the presidency while also winning the popular vote, it will be a different kind of mandate for him than the one he claimed to have gotten in 2016.
🗞️ Today’s top stories
- ❌ Disinformation pipeline: Brandy Zadrozny details the step-by-step process for how Russian propaganda reaches and influences the U.S. Read more →
- 🗣️ Sticks over carrots: Trump said Black and Latino voters who back Harris need to have their “’head examined,” part of an ongoing trend of the former president telling specific demographic groups that they deserve ridicule or have something wrong with their mental state if they’re not voting for him. Read more →
- 📻 Long-time listener, first-time caller: In a wide-ranging live radio town hall in Detroit hosted by Charlamagne tha God, Harris said she is still open to slavery reparations and slammed Trump for allegedly sending Covid tests to Russia “when Black people were dying” back home. Read more →
- 🎤 Former FLOTUS sighting: Michelle Obama will headline a rally for her nonpartisan group “When We All Vote” in Atlanta on Oct. 29 in an effort to mobilize first-time voters. Read more →
- 🗳️ Early vote update: Virginia’s first two weeks of voting by mail and early in-person voting suggest that the gap between the early vote in Republican and Democratic counties might be smaller in 2024 compared to 2020. Read more →
- ⚖️ Legal update 1: A Georgia judge blocked a new rule from the state’s election board that would have required counties to count ballots cast on Election Day by hand, a provision critics had said would cause delays and disruptions in reporting results in the battleground state. Read more →
- ⚖️ Legal update 2: The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that convicted felons who served their sentences are allowed to vote, after the state’s top election official sought to keep them from casting ballots ahead of Nov. 5. Read more →
- 🤠 Deep in the heart: Ted Cruz and Colin Allred clashed over abortion, trans athletes and Jan. 6 in their only debate of a Texas Senate race that has been more competitive than expected. Read more →
- Follow live coverage from the campaign trail →
That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com
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