Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are ramping up their campaigns on the air and on the ground. Can either side break the current stalemate?
The air war is already well under way in the seven battleground states. From mid-July through mid-August, ads for Mr. Trump dominated the airwaves. His campaign and two pro-Trump super PACs spent $48 million to run 44,000 spots. Ms. Harris’s campaign, Joe Biden’s now-obsolescent organization and supportive super PACs paid $63 million to run 32,700 ads.
Though Florida isn’t a battleground, both sides ran ads in Palm Beach. The Trump campaign spent about $47,000 on cable ads there, presumably so they’d been seen at Mar-a-Lago. The Harris campaign matched these with at least $50,000 worth of spots tying Mr. Trump to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The spending reveals what possible paths each campaign sees to 270 electoral votes. Both sides are particularly focused on Pennsylvania. Democrats have put down $109 million in the Keystone State on the presidential race since March—including spots reserved through Election Day. For Republicans, it’s $102 million. The next most expensive state is Michigan. There Democrats have earmarked $81 million and Republicans $19 million. In Georgia, Democrats have outspent Republicans $58 million to $29 million.
This suggests Democrats want to tie down Pennsylvania and Michigan and then play for Georgia. Going forward, ad spending in the Peach State will likely eclipse that in Michigan. The research firm AdImpact says today 81% of the Trump campaign’s ad spending through Nov. 5 is in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The air war will get only more expensive. Team Harris has announced it will spend $370 million on broadcast TV, cable and digital advertising between now and Election Day.
Democrats can make their buy now because they’ve been better at fundraising. The Harris campaign says it has brought in a staggering $540 million since Mr. Biden dropped out on July 21. After collecting about $139 million in July, the Trump campaign had $327 million in cash on Aug. 1. Since then it has spent more than it has taken in—raising $130 million in August, only to end the month with $295 million on hand. Expect the Democrats’ numbers to be much more favorable.
Still, the sheer volume of ads could numb voters, making the air war a draw. The audience-research firm Tunnl found that in the Philadelphia and Detroit media markets between Aug. 11 and 16, the top 10% of swing voters saw 270 and 154 ads, respectively. The old rule of thumb was that voters needed to see an ad only 10 times before it burned in. At some point the spots become a blur.
Then there’s the ground game. The two camps have different approaches to persuading undecided voters and getting out supporters. The Harris-Walz campaign inherited from the Biden-Harris effort more than 312 offices in the battlegrounds with 2,000 organizers who work with local party committees, unions and issue groups.
The Harris campaign should be grateful Team Biden began this work last spring since this centralized, top-down, staff-driven model needs time to get to scale. Team Harris is there: It recently deployed more than 10,000 volunteers to make about 900,000 calls and knock on 150,000 doors. They reached more than a million voters—all in a single weekend.
Along with maximizing Democratic turnout in big cities, the Harris campaign is deploying this force to reduce the GOP’s margin in rural counties. The campaign is also drawing on the abortion issue to expand the gender gap, already at a historic high.
