Republican Party Hits Eight-Year Low For Cash: Could Lack Of Large Donors Hurt 2024 Election Odds?

With a potential rematch of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden, advertising spending is expected to hit records for the 2024 election cycle.

This could be bad news for the Republican National Committee, which has reported lower political donations.

What Happened: Donald Trump leads many national polls ahead of President Joe Biden and has a commanding lead over his Republican competition for the GOP nomination for the presidential election in polls.

The Republican National Committee might not be able to help Trump or other candidates out as much as they have in recent elections, based on the size of its current war chest.

According to the Washington Post, the RNC had $9.1 million in cash at the end of October, as per a party disclosure. This total was the lowest for the RNC in any Federal Election Commission report since February 2015.

The report could be worrisome as the RNC had around $20 million, or over double at this point in the 2016 election cycle and had around $61 million at this point four years ago for the 2020 election cycle.

The Democratic National Committee had around $17.7 million as reported for the end of October, ranking nearly double that of the amount from the RNC.

Reports say the RNC is getting less large checks from political donors and its amount of small donations has also fallen.

"We're going through the same efforts we always go through to raise money: the same donor meetings, retreats, digital advertising, direct mail," RNC member Oscar Brock said, as shared by the Washington Post.

Reports said some donors might not be making donations this year as the donations could directly benefit Trump, a person that not all Republicans were willing to support with their own money.

Lower donation amounts and totals could also come as a result of higher inflation and tightened consumer spending.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel cited voters giving more to individual candidates instead of the overall party as a reason for the lower donation amounts.

"I think there's more donors just fully committed to their candidate right now, saying I am all in, and once the nominee is set, I'll be there," McDaniel said.

Related Link: Political Ad Spending In 2024 Election To Smash Records

Why It's Important: Concerns over the amount of cash the Republican National Committee has could be escalated with Trump's call to cancel Republican primary debates to save money.

"RNC must save money on lowest ever ratings debates. Use it against the Democrats to STOP THE STEAL! If not, REVAMP THE RNC NOW!!!" Trump recently said.

Trump also expressed concerns that the RNC was ready to help with the 2024 election.

Increased concerns for the RNC also came after the party lost several key races and ballot initiatives in recent elections.

With a highly competitive 2024 election race expected between party frontrunners Trump and Biden, the low amount of cash the RNC has and lack of big donations could be worrisome. Trump was able to increase his war chest in recent quarters.

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