Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign set a record for the biggest fund-raising quarter ever this fall, raising $1 billion in the three-month period that ended Sept. 30.
Ms. Harris’s campaign and its allied party committees raised over $359 million in September alone, compared with the $160 million reported by former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign and allied groups.
Ms. Harris and her groups entered October with over $346 million on hand; Mr. Trump’s aides said his campaign and its affiliated groups had $283 million.
The vast gap between Ms. Harris’s and Mr. Trump’s committees was laid bare in new filings made with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday evening. The figures show the state of the race as of the end of September, and they capture the fallout of the presidential debate that month, which Ms. Harris was widely perceived to have won.
The figures may be new but the story is familiar.
Each month since Ms. Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, she has significantly out-raised and outspent Mr. Trump, building a vastly bigger campaign than has the Republican nominee.
In September, the margin by which Ms. Harris’s principal campaign committee out-raised Mr. Trump was nearly identical to the margin by which she outspent him — about 3.5 to 1.
Ms. Harris’s committee raised about $222 million in September, while Mr. Trump’s raised about $63 million. Ms. Harris’s committee entered October with about $187 million on hand; Mr. Trump’s committee had just about $120 million.
The vast majority of both campaign committees’ spending was on advertising. About $222 million of the $270 million that Ms. Harris’s campaign spent in September was on media buys and production costs. Mr. Trump spent about $53 million on media costs, a slightly smaller proportion of the $78 million that his campaign spent during that 30-day period.
The previous record for a fund-raising quarter across all party committees is believed to have been set by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the third quarter of 2020, when his campaign and allied groups reported about $888 million in total fund-raising, based on self-reported totals.
Both Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, combined with their party committees, raised less in September 2024 than did the corresponding efforts in 2020. Ms. Harris’s $378 million was less than the record-setting $383 million that Mr. Biden’s team raised in September 2020. Mr. Trump’s $160 million in September 2024 is less than the $248 million he raised in September 2020.
Mr. Trump has consistently raised less money than during his last run for president, in part because his low-dollar fund-raising apparatus is struggling to keep up with its pace four years ago. Ms. Harris, for her part, is doing better at fund-raising than did Mr. Biden, who for a few months this year was raising less each month than Mr. Trump.
To deal with the cash crunch, the Trump campaign has recently been working to cut costs by offloading some traditional campaign expenditures, such as event-production fees and some salary costs, to party-affiliated committees.
The Republican National Committee entered October with $69.7 million on hand. The R.N.C. disclosed spending about $3.5 million on payroll and taxes to about 340 staff members in September.
The Democratic National Committee had $46.6 million on hand, after spending some $102 million during September. The D.N.C. disclosed spending $6 million on payroll and taxes to about 680 people that month, twice as many people.
Campaigns and party committees typically work to spend their cash down to zero, although both campaigns are aware that post-election litigation could require additional funds.
Given her cash advantage, Ms. Harris has been able to spend more of her time, a precious resource in these final weeks, campaigning — while Mr. Trump has had to spend time raising money in places like Texas and Florida, where he hosted a finance event last Wednesday. Mr. Trump has also scheduled a fund-raising reception in New York preceding his coming rally at Madison Square Garden.
Ms. Harris can also spend more money on voter contact. She and her supporters are scheduled to outspend Mr. Trump and his backers on television and radio advertising by about 30 percent over the final two weeks of the campaign, according to data from AdImpact. (That is actually a smaller gap than the 60 percent spending advantage that the Democrats enjoyed over the Republicans in the past two weeks.)
Those supporters are primarily Ms. Harris’s enormous super PACs. Ms. Harris’s team has labored to keep attention on the Republican billionaires funding Mr. Trump’s super PAC, but rarely discuses their own at Future Forward, the main big-money pro-Harris group. A few Democratic billionaires disclosed eight-figure checks to Future Forward in September: The Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and the crypto billionaire Chris Larsen gave about $10 million each, and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois gave $5 million.
Future Forward’s biggest donor, though, continues to be undisclosed: About 40 percent of the money that the super PAC raised last month came from its own dark-money group. And the group has spent around $125 million on ads over just the past two weeks, making its $70 million cash-on-hand sum as of Sept. 30 outdated and strongly suggesting that the super PAC raised significant money in early October.
Mr. Trump’s super PACs disclosed most big supporters earlier last week, but the disclosures on Sunday revealed new contributions by one of Mr. Trump’s strongest supporters. Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Gilded Age banking fortune, put $25 million more into a pro-Trump super PAC. Mr. Mellon has now donated a staggering $150 million this cycle to that group, which entered October with $59 million on hand. Mr. Trump’s recently appointed transition co-chair, Linda McMahon, also donated $5 million. The group entered October with $61 million on hand.
In an aberration from its traditional communications strategy, Ms. Harris’s campaign declined to disclose any of its fund-raising totals to reporters until it officially filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday. Campaign officials were concerned that if donors large and small knew in early October about how well they had done during the preceding month, that they would raise less in the ensuing weeks of October, people familiar with the strategy have previously said.
Another portrait of presidential fund-raising will emerge on Thursday, when campaigns and super PACs report money raised and spent through the first half of October.
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