Republicans Have One Huge Advantage Ahead of the Election, and They’re Banking On It to Avoid a Midterm Wipeout

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With three weeks to go until the midterms, Democratic campaign groups and super PACs are speaking with one voice: They have the right environment. They have the right message. They have the right candidates.

They just need more money. ASAP.

“Given the Republican cash advantage, we now find ourselves in a situation where we could be leaving winnable races on the table,” Julie Merz, executive director of House Democrats’ campaign arm, wrote in an Oct. 9 memo, warning that a dozen or so opportunities—those only reachable because of the anti-GOP environment—might be missed without an infusion of cash. The memo encouraged donors to cough up another $17 million over the next two weeks. House Democrats’ main super PAC, House Majority PAC, put its request at $38.5 million. On the Senate side, the main Democratic super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, warned that “Republican-aligned outside groups have built a financial advantage neither party has had before, large enough to bury our many advantages under a paid media blitz before November.”

And Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has put the cash disadvantage front and center in his messaging: “With just three weeks until Election Day, the battle for control of the Senate comes down to one defining question,” Chuck Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Monday. “Will the unprecedented tsunami of Republican money defeat the massive Democratic advantage in candidates, policies, and political climate?”

“Unprecedented tsunami” isn’t hyperbole. While it’s hard to get an exact number on the cash advantage, the Associated Press estimates that the “$1 billion that Republicans have amassed compares with roughly $579 million held by a comparable collection of major Democratic groups.” A Washington Post analysis of the top 50 donors this cycle shows Republicans having raised $1.07 billion from the group relative to Democrats’ $454 million.

These numbers don’t even account for third-quarter sums that have yet to be disclosed. Elon Musk, as the New York Times first reported, gave a stunning $276 million to GOP groups and super PACs in the third quarter, raising his total giving for the cycle to $366 million. The $158 million alone he gave to Senate Republicans’ top super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, covers the group’s staggering investment in Texas to rescue Ken Paxton.

“Democrats are in the strongest position yet to win a Senate majority with a map we have expanded deep into Republican territory,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee executive director Devan Barber said in a statement. “Republicans are making a last-ditch effort to rescue their flailing candidates and hang onto their vulnerable majority by flooding battlegrounds with increased spending. Democrats have been vastly outspent across the battleground and need additional resources to maintain the advantage we built with stronger candidates and a better message.”

Where did this cash advantage come from, anyway?

It’s not that Democratic groups are struggling to raise money (with the notable exception of the Democratic National Committee). As is typically the case, individual Democratic campaigns themselves are regularly outraising their GOP counterparts, whose candidacies are more reliant on big checks from outside groups. Consider the Texas Senate race, where James Talarico’s campaign had raised $69 million through the end of the second quarter while Paxton had only raised $9 million. While that’s a particularly lopsided example, Senate Democratic campaigns hold significant advantages in most other major battlegrounds. And Democrats’ main House and Senate super PACs each recently announced record third-quarter fundraising totals.

The bulk of the disparity can be traced to a GOP fundraising vehicle for which Democrats have no equivalent: MAGA Inc., the president’s super PAC. By the end of August, MAGA Inc. had $416 million on hand. It begun disbursing that money in bulk to House and Senate races after Labor Day.

The nature of how Donald Trump, as well as other GOP super PACs, came into this money has become a campaign talking point for Democrats. By speaking so openly about the cash disadvantage, Democratic leaders aren’t just trying to raise more money. (Though they are definitely trying to raise more money—think of these despairing memos to “interested parties” as the highfalutin, big-donor equivalent of daily Democratic spam emails threatening the apocalypse if you don’t donate $1 RIGHT NOW.) They’re working the fundraising disparity into their larger messaging on Trump’s corruption, with MAGA Inc. and others serving as a cash receptacle for those seeking something from the transactional president. As Schumer put it in his letter to colleagues, “The checks are coming in from every entity looking to buy a pardon, curry favor, and move the needle in favor of their personal interests.”

“Trump’s modeled a way to get this unlimited amount of cash from people who are seeking business before the government,” Lauren French, a spokesperson for Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC, told me.

So how does this financial edge for Republicans help them—and how does it not?

In short, it keeps Republicans—who have very little going for them—in the ballgame and allows them to avoid some tough decisions. While Republicans have started to pull ads in some states and districts they deem unsalvageable, that list would be a lot longer were it not for the hundreds of millions of bonus dollars that have materialized for them. Only recently did Republican outside groups cut funding from the Georgia and North Carolina Senate races; they may not have put much money into those states to begin with in any other cycle. They have the resources to backstop suddenly vulnerable Senate candidates in places like South Carolina and Nebraska, and can spend $150 million to save Jon Husted in Ohio while Elon Musk effectively foots the roughly similar bill to rescue Paxton in Texas. And in the House—where MAGA Inc. is sprinkling a few million dollars here, a few million there to dozens of races—the money can prevent the bottom from falling out.

But money isn’t everything—especially super PAC money. And Republicans haven’t managed their largesse particularly well.

It’s not just that campaigns can purchase ads at lower rates than super PACs. It also matters when those ads are purchased. Much to congressional Republicans’ chagrin, Trump’s team dawdled for months before committing their MAGA Inc. funds. That means Republicans have been buying ads in already saturated markets at expensive rates. Advertising rates in Texas are now so expensive, for example, that pro-Paxton super PACs have found it cheaper to run ads nationally during football games than to buy time in the Texas media markets. In short, Democrats, by having better-funded campaigns and reserving advertisements earlier in the year, are getting more bang for their buck.

It’s also important to note that for ads to work, it’s important for them to be good.

Even with the higher rates that Republicans are paying, they are airing more ads. But a Politico survey from last week presented a peculiar finding: 70 percent of respondents “said they’d either seen more spots in support of Democrats or an equal amount between the parties” over the previous week, while “only 24% said they’d seen more ads for Republicans.” In other words, Democratic ads appear to have been more resonant. It’s not just that Republicans have less to run on in this environment. It also raises questions about how well these ads are being slapped together. With hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into the ecosystem at once, and ad-makers earning astounding sums of cash for their quick work, you’re going to get a lot of slop.

“I was talking to a Republican consultant who ran one of the big super PACs and he, like, hates all of their media consultants,” Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, told me. “Because they’re grifters, they make so much money. There’s no incentive for these Republican media people to do a good job. Because they make, whatever it is, tens of millions of dollars whether they win or lose. And so they buy so badly.”

However haphazardly they manage it, the GOP’s financial advantage is still an advantage. It won’t change the overall direction of the midterms, magically giving Republicans a good night against such wretched fundamentals. Where it matters is on the margins, and so much rests on the margins this cycle.

In order to take control of the Senate, Democrats don’t just need to flip the regular old swing states. They need to flip some red states. Among the options: Ohio, which Trump won by 11 points in 2024; Alaska, which Trump won by 13; Texas, which Trump won by 14; Iowa, which Trump won by 13; and Kansas, which Trump won by 16. (Then there is Maine, which Harris won by 7, but where Susan Collins is sui generis.) Democrats, in other words, need a strong Election Day to take control of the House, but a historic one to take control of the Senate. If all Republicans’ billions can muster is even one measly percentage point in their direction, that could be enough to turn Democrats’ performance from one of unlikely Senate conquest to one of very, very impressive losses across the map.