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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Kamala Harris is planning to spend $370mn on advertising between early September and the US election in November, including what her campaign is describing as the biggest digital ad buy in the history of American politics.
The announcement on Sunday by Harris comes as the vice-president is trying to translate the $540mn fundraising surge since her July entry into the race against Donald Trump into benefits on the campaign trail.
The Harris campaign said it was booking television ads worth $170mn between September 3 and November 5 nationally and in key battleground states, and a further $200mn in digital ads, saying it was “on pace to spend more on digital persuasion media than any political organisation ever”.
“These reservations are centred around early investments in the most sought out publishers and platforms like Hulu, Roku, YouTube, Paramount, Spotify and Pandora,” the Harris campaign said on Sunday.
“In making these early reservations, the campaign has secured the most premium inventory, locked in significantly more efficient pricing, and reserved before Trump and his allied groups had a chance to”.
According to the Financial Times national polling tracker, Harris leads Trump by 3.8 percentage points. The US vice-president also has the advantage in four out of seven battleground states, having benefited from a big jump in enthusiasm for her candidacy among Democrats over the past few weeks.
But in a memo released on Sunday, Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign’s chair, said they remained “clear underdogs” in the race. She forecast the results would be as close as in 2020, when US President Joe Biden beat Trump narrowly in a several key states.
“This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin,” said O’Malley Dillon.
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment on its own advertising bookings between early September and early November. But the Harris campaign said it was moving early to gain a “strategic advantage” in the battle for the airwaves and online.
Harris is expected to campaign in Pennsylvania and Michigan on Monday during the US Labor Day holiday, but much of the public focus will be on the September 10 debate, in which Trump and Harris are still at odds over the rules.
The vice-president insists on having live microphones on throughout the debate, while Trump wants to keep microphones muted when the other candidate is speaking, as was the case during the late June debate between him and Biden.