Biden Has $466 Million in Bank, and a Huge Financial Edge on Trump – The New York Times

Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign said on Sunday that it entered September with $466 million in the bank together with the Democratic Party, providing Mr. Biden a vast financial advantage of about $141 million over President Trump heading into the intense final stretch of the campaign.

The money edge is a complete reversal from this spring, when Mr. Biden emerged as the Democratic nominee and was $187 million behind Mr. Trump, who began raising money for his re-election shortly after he was inaugurated in 2017. But the combination of slower spending by Mr. Biden’s campaign in the spring, his record-setting fund-raising over the summer — especially after he named Senator Kamala Harris of California as his running mate — and heavy early spending by Mr. Trump has erased the president’s once-formidable financial lead.

Mr. Trump and his joint operations with the Republican National Committee entered September with $325 million, according to Mr. Trump’s communications director, Tim Murtaugh.

The Trump campaign pulled back on its television spending in August to conserve money, as some campaign insiders fretted about a cash crunch in the closing stretch of the campaign. But other officials argued that the Trump campaign would continue to raise heavily from small donors and that the cutbacks over the summer were shortsighted.

In the last four weeks of August, the Biden campaign spent $65.5 million on television advertising, compared with $18.7 million by the Trump campaign, according to data from Advertising Analytics.

Even after the reduction in TV ad spending, Federal Election Commission filings made public late Sunday showed Mr. Trump’s campaign committee ended August having raised $61.7 million and spent $61.2 million, along with adding about $900,000 in debt.

Money in the candidate’s own committees, as opposed to the political party’s account, is the most valuable of funds because election rules require those accounts to pay for certain types of spending, such as television ads.

Mr. Biden’s campaign committee reported raising $212 million and spending $130.3 million — banking more than $80 million last month.

Democratic donations surged further over the weekend. Following the death of former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which opened a vacancy that could tilt the ideological bearing of the Supreme Court further to the right, contributors shattered records on ActBlue, the biggest online processing platform for the left.