Kamala spends $47 MILLION more than Trump on digital campaign in 1st month at the top of the ticket

Since Vice President Kamala Harris succeeded President Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, the Harris campaign has used its election war chest to outspend former President Donald Trump’s campaign by at least $47 million in digital ads and more than $20 million in ads on digital streaming services.

The Daily Wire reported Thursday that between July 25 and August 23, the Harris Victory Fund and Harris for President campaign spent $27,388,780 on Meta ads, while the Trump National Committee Campaign spent just $2,631,466.

Harris' campaign has been focusing on battleground states, with the top five being Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Georgia. Trump has had his eye on Pennsylvania, with special attention to Wilkes-Barre and Harrisburg, while being keenly attuned to Atlanta, Georgia, and Bozeman, Montana.

With YouTube, the Harris campaign spent $11,257,700 with ads for California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Washington. The Trump campaign spent less than half that, with $5,393,600 for ads in Michigan, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. While the Trump Campaign has spent less than Harris, his campaign is focusing almost exclusively on battleground states and not states where the Republican brand is strong or those with strong affiliation to the Democrats. Harris is paying for millions of dollars of advertising in states like California and New York that are unlikely to be flipped by Trump.

Democrats continue to decry the electoral college as the final arbitrator of a presidential victory, The Daily Wire noted, because they say it is less democratic than simple popular vote because it does not marginalize small states. By advertising in safe, blue states, the Harris campaign may be betting on winning the popular vote.

Harris is also outspending Trump with Google ads, spending $18,933,100 and again targeting a mixed bag of blue and red states: California, New York, Washington, Texas, and Massachusetts. The Trump campaign is also focused on friendly and unfriendly states, spending $2,197,800 on California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Georgia.

Harris also benefited from Google “bugs” in July and August, in which people searching for information or stories on the attempted assassination of Trump were assisted by Google’s auto-complete, which would fill in any name but Trump. A general search for Trump would take the viewer to information about Harris. Google claimed this was a “bug” and not a biased search engine. Harris’ campaign was taking out ads that featured changed news headlines in Google searches in order to rephrase them to the vice president’s advantage.

The Trump campaign is also lagging behind Harris on advertising for digital streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Peacock, as well as connected TVs like Roku, according to the Financial Times. Once again, the Harris campaign is spending twice as much as Trump: $56 million to $30 million. The Harris campaign is also gearing up for an advertising blitz to begin after the Labor Day long weekend, with a total of $370 million for television and digital stream ads.

Trump has less money to spend than Harris largely because of legal bills associated with the multiple court cases brought against him by the Biden administration's Department of Justice and other prosecutors. As he has in the past, Trump likes to rely on the free advertising of mass rallies that are still covered by mainstream media, but even more so, by dozens of social media channels with viewership sometimes higher than cable news networks. A rally in Butler, PA, where an attempted assassination put the president’s life in jeopardy, has not cooled Trump’s enthusiasm for these events.