Outside Money Favors Clinton Over Trump By A 2-1 Margin

(The cartoon image above was found at progressive.org.)

When the misguided Citizens United vs FEC decision came out of the Supreme Court a few years ago, Democrats were horrified. They had visions of Wall Street bankers and corporate moguls pouring huge sums of money into national elections to give the Republicans an advantage. But that is not what happened this year. In 2016, the outside money has favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 2 to 1 margin. It looks like Trump scares the wealthy donors (or they see him as having no chance to win).

Here's part of a New York Times article on the subject by Nicholas Confessore and Rachel Shorey:

Six years after a Supreme Court decision opened vast new channels for money to flow into national elections, Democrats have built the largest and best-coordinated apparatus of outside groups operating in the 2016 presidential campaign, defying expectations that conservative and corporate wealth would dominate the race.

A dozen different organizations raised over $200 million through the beginning of October and since May have spent more than $110 million on television, digital, and radio ads in support of Hillary Clinton, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission through Thursday.

The handful of organizations backing Donald J. Trump have raised less than half that amount, a steep dive from four years ago, when wealthy Republicans poured hundreds of millions of dollars into groups backing the Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The Democrats’ success this year reflects, in part, Mrs. Clinton’s close personal ties to her party’s elite donors and her allies’ willingness to exploit the 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case far more aggressively than President Obama did.

But the Democrats are also deeply indebted to one man: Mr. Trump, whose provocations and tirades — along with a loud crusade against his own party’s donors — have virtually shut off what once promised to be a half-billion-dollar spigot of outside money.

“Everyone thought that we would be outspent, that there would be significant operations built at the presidential level for the other candidate,” said Guy Cecil, a former Clinton aide who heads Priorities USA Action, the main hub of big Democratic giving. “That obviously hasn’t happened.”

The biggest groups set up or expanded by conservatives since Citizens United — including American Crossroads, founded by Karl Rove, and the network overseen by Charles G. and David H. Koch — are absent from the presidential campaign, focusing instead on protecting Republicans in Congress.