By the time a new president takes office in January 2017, that person’s supporters likely will have spent more than $1 billion to elect him/her. Merely running in the pre-primary phase of the campaign costs millions.
The GOP began the 2016 race with an enormous field of hopefuls — 16 candidates in all, mostly sitting or former governors and senators, plus 3 amateurs who strangely have dominated in the campaign’s early stages. To date 2 of the career politicians have dropped out, in both cases because they ran out of money.
It’s likely there will be more dropouts before the voting begins. Logic argues these will be the candidates lagging in the polls and/or doing poorly in the debates, but it won’t necessarily actually play out that way, because some niche candidates are well funded. Ted Cruz, for example, is raising lots of money and has more cash in the bank than any other GOP candidate.
To figure out which campaigns are faltering, we need to look at their finances. Before we do that, though, let’s create a perspective. How much is a lot of money? And how much is too little?
Looking first at the money leaders, in the 3rd quarter, Clinton raised $29.1M, Sanders raised $26.2M, and Carson raised $20.7M. So anything over $20M per quarter is top-tier in fundraising terms. Second-tier is over $10M; the candidates in this category include Bush ($13.3M) and Cruz ($12.2M).
Of course, there’s more to presidential campaign finance than how much money you raise. At least two other factors are critically important in determining whether you can stay in the race: (a) your fundraising costs, and (b) your campaign spending.
Sanders is spending about half of his money coming in, while Clinton is spending nearly all of hers, so on paper, he has more staying powr than she does. Carson is spending 60% of his campaign income on fundraising (he’s getting his money the expensive way, by direct mail solicitation), so only about $8M of his $20M per quarter is available for campaign expenses, which puts his available resources well behind Bush’s, who is spent $11.4M last quarter. Fiorina isn’t far behind — and may match — Carson in campaign resources; she raised $6.7M in the 3rd quarter, not counting significant super-PAC backing. And her polling is catching up with Rubio, who’s in third place.
Trump’s figures really aren’t relevant, because he can spend a billion dollars of his own money if he wants to. In fact, he’s not spending much at all, only $4M in the 3rd quarter, $2.7M of which came from donors. This is partly do to the fact Trump has benefited from an enormous amount of free publicity. He can get media attention like no other candidate.
Sanders has evolved from a progressive darling and Clinton alternative to a competitive candidate, both in fundraising and polls. The Democratic nomination race seems likely to expand, as all signs point to Biden entering the fray. O’Malley, Webb, and Chaffee theoretically are also running, but they’re just backdrops and will remain so.
On the GOP side, the top-tier contenders are Trump, Carson, and Rubio; the second tier consists of Fiorina, Cruz, and Bush, all of whom are well financed; the third tier is Huckabee, Paul, Kasich, and Christie, none of whom have strong finances; and the also-rans (candidates with less than 1% in the polls) are Jindal, Santorum, Graham, Pataki, and Gilmore (listed in order of rank in RealClearPolitics’ aggregation of polls conducted between Sep. 22 and Oct. 12, detailed here).
Let’s look at a few of these lesser candidates. Rand Paul raised $2.5M and spent $4.5M in the 3rd quarter, and has cash reserves for less than 3 months of campaigning, but his fundraising is picking up a bit, which may keep his campaign alive a bit longer. However, it appears doomed. Huckabee, Jindal, and Graham are each raising and spending about $1M per quarter; of them, only Huckabee polls well enough to make it onto the main debate stage.
The biggest surprise of the 2016 campaign is how weak a candidate Bush has turned out to be. He has massive financial backing, but has been lackluster in the debates, and is lagging in the polls. His formidable financial resources may not be enough to save him.
For now, though, those resources allow him to stay in the race despite lousy polls. The conventional wisdom is that the amateurs will fade as they come under more scrutiny and their inexperience and policy ignorance become painfully apparent; but this assumes GOP voters are a rational bunch, when they clearly are not. The game seems likely to play out this way: By the time voters finally reject Trump, Carson, and Fiorina as unqualified, only Bush and Rubio will be left, so all they have to do over the next few months is survive while money problems force the rest to drop out.
As for the Democrats, it now appears impossible for Clinton to bankrupt Sanders, and she may not even be able to outspend him. She soon may have to fend off Biden, as well. All of a sudden, a Democratic nomination race that everyone assumed was locked up is competitive, and while the odds still favor Clinton, it’s now a horse race.