Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have just handed in their last fundraising reports before the election.
These documents, filed with the Federal Election Commission, provide an 11th hour window into the financial health of the two leading presidential campaigns and their allied super-PACs.
{mosads}Here are five takeaways from the September fundraising reports:
1. Clinton has crushed the big money war
Ironically, it’s the candidate who says she wants to reduce the influence of billionaires on American politics who’s received the lion’s share of donor cash in 2016.
Clinton, the Democratic nominee, has outraised and outspent Trump on a massive scale.
Clinton’s campaign and her top allied super-PAC, Priorities USA, raised more than $618 million from the time she entered the race last April through to the end of September, according to The Hill’s analysis of FEC reports.
That total doesn’t include the many millions extra that Clinton has raised for the Democratic National Committee and state parties around the country.
Trump’s campaign and his three richest super-PACs combined have raised less than half the money that Clinton and her allies have raised. Trump and his three highest raising super-PACs raised about $278.4 million from the time he entered the race, last June, through the end of September, most of that coming since the campaign started a fundraising drive after he clinched the nomination in May. About $56 million of the total has come from Trump’s pocket.
On the spending side, Clinton and her super-PAC have also surpassed Trump through both the primary and the general election periods.
Clinton and Priorities USA spent more than $531.2 million by the end of September. And the Democratic Party is spending many millions more to help Clinton and down ballot Democrats.
Trump and his top three super-PACs spent about $233 million by the end of September.
2. Trump is finally trying to compete with Clinton in paid media
For much of this campaign, Trump has managed to do what no other candidate in modern presidential history has accomplished: Compete and win without spending serious cash on advertising.
So skilled was Trump at dominating cable TV and social media attention through the primaries that he beat vastly better funded competitors in Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz.
In the late stages of the general election, however, Trump appears to have realized that there are limits to his free media strategy. Clinton has had the airwaves largely to herself for months and has been bombing Trump with negative ads in battleground states.
In September, Trump aggressively ramped up his advertising spending.
Of the $70 million Trump’s campaign spent over September, more than $20 million went to placed media, mostly TV, and about the same went to digital advertising and online consulting.
Clinton, however, still outspent Trump in September. Her campaign dropped $82.6 million. About $66 million of that went on the category “media buy” – industry code for paid advertising reservations.
3. Clinton has a massive staff. Trump still doesn’t.
Trump doesn’t believe in traditional political mechanics. His theory, for example, is that Barack Obama won the presidency largely through the force of personal charisma rather than through his revolutionary ground game or data operations.
Trump has carried that theory all the way through his presidential campaign. One can see this most starkly in the size of his staff, which is dwarfed by the Clinton operation.
Trump has preferred to keep his staff super-lean and outsource much of his organizational effort to the Republican National Committee.
In September, Trump’s campaign had 168 staff on its payroll. Clinton’s campaign had 814 on its payroll. Even if Trump decided to make a massive October push, it’s now far too late to make up that extraordinary campaign infrastructure disadvantage.
4. Trump is finally investing in some traditional trappings
Trump became the Republican nominee by avoiding more than just paid advertising. He also thumbed his nose at media consultants, data analysts and pollsters.
Now, though Trump’s staff remains small, he has finally begun investing serious cash in some of these other traditional campaign functions.
In September, Trump’s campaign spent $1.7 million on polling, perhaps a nod to Kellyanne Conway, the pollster who became his campaign manager in August. That spending reflects a major departure from the early stages of his campaign, when he relied on public polls, and enjoyed boasting of the latest CNN or NBC numbers in rallies and on Twitter.
Trump has also been ramping up his investment in digital infrastructure, spending more than $20 million in September on digital advertising and online consulting. His small dollar fundraising is unprecedented for a Republican presidential nominee – one of the remaining bright spots in Trump’s campaign.
Trump also lifted his investment in data analytics and voter targeting, paying $5 million to Cambridge Analytica, a firm owned by two of Trump’s major donors — hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah.
5. A new whale emerges on the left
Many Americans have heard of hedge fund billionaire George Soros — a Democratic mega-donor and major Hillary Clinton backer.
But few have heard of Donald Sussman. That’s about to change.
Sussman, a hedge fund manager, has now given $21 million to the pro-Clinton super-PAC, Priorities USA, according to the Washington Post.
The latest public filings show that Sussman gave $6 million to the Clinton super-PAC in September, bringing his total donations for the cycle to $19 million. But in an interview with the Post, Sussman said he’d chipped in an additional $2 million in October, putting him on track to be Clinton’s biggest donor.
The mega-donor told the Post he wanted nothing from Clinton except for her to get big money – like his – out of politics.
“It’s very odd to be giving millions when your objective is to actually get the money out of politics,” he said. “I am a very strong supporter of publicly financed campaigns, and I think the only way to accomplish that is to get someone like Secretary Clinton, who is committed to cleaning up the unfortunate disaster created by the activist court in Citizens United.”
Sussman told the Post he’d spent little time with Clinton since giving her super-PAC all that money. He said he had “a four-minute conversation” with Clinton, during which she assured him that campaign finance reform is “a top priority.”