Spending on US presidential race, Congress polls to hit $6.6bn

Spending for US presidential and Congress elections this year has touched $5.5 billion till October 24 and is projected to rise to a record $6.57 billion by November 8. This is despite the fact that Donald Trump has spent less than half of what Hillary Clinton has. The slack has been picked up by enormous inflow of money into the Congressional races for 34 Senate seats and 435 House of Representatives seats.
In 2012, when Barack Obama was seeking reelection against Mitt Romney , the presidential race had involved $2.62 billion spending.This time, the nasty and bitter fight between Clinton and Trump will see spending of an estimated $2.57 billion, the Washington-based campaign finance tracker Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) said. These projections are done on Federal Election Commission filings by candidates, Parties and outside groups till October 24.
“Outside money groups that purportedly work independently from candidates poured larger sums into the races for Congress and the executive office. The groups have spent $93.7 million more than at this point in 2012. House races accounted for the biggest jump in outside spending, percentage wise; outlays went from $67 million at this point in 2012 to $120 million this year,“ CRP said. Outside money is money spent by groups that are neither the candidate's own committee nor the party's official campaign committee. Such groups have flooded the campaign with about $1.3 billion, making up about 27% of all spending so far and is $190 million more than the 2012 polls. The main reason behind a considerable chunk of outside money flowing towards Senate races is the unpopularity of Trump among Republican backers. Some of the biggest GOP donors like the American Crossroads, founded and run by Karl Rove, and non-profits Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners backed by billionaire Koch brothers have been channelising resources to hot Senate races.
Some of the most expensive Senate races include Florida ($45.4 million), Pennsylvania ($45.3 million), Wisconsin ($38.1 million) and Ohio ($35.6 million), all swing states. Among House districts, those in Wisconsin, Maryland, Florida and Illinois are seeing big inflow of funds.
CRP says much of this funding activity will never get recorded because of rules specifying that outside funding on “issues“ needs to be reported after a certain date prior to the election. Most outside funders take care to undertake 'stealth funding' which avoids the reporting period rule. The last filing by candidates and funders took place on 24 October and its data will be available next week after processing, CRP said