Harris Outpacing Trump in Ad Spending in Every Swing State, Including Long Shot North Carolina

Vice President Harris is planning to swamp the Trump campaign with advertising spending over the course of the next six weeks in the lead-up to the presidential election. Democrats have already dominated Republicans on the airwaves, and with hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, Ms. Harris is hoping to put President Trump on the defensive in states he was expected to easily win just a few months ago. According to the most recent report from the ad tracking and analysis firm AdImpact, Ms. Harris is planning a tidal wave of ads in swing states between now and November. Every week beginning September 15 up until the week of the election, Ms. Harris has tens of millions of dollars more planned for advertising across the country than Trump. The report shows that, as of Wednesday, Ms. Harris and the outside spending groups supporting her are planning to spend $165 million more than Trump on advertising. Her largest lead over Trump will come during the week of October 27 — the week before the presidential election — when she is planning to spend $42 million more than Trump on the airwaves. Much of that spending advantage comes from the pro-Harris outside spending group Future Forward, which has nearly $160 million worth of ad reservations placed. One of the most notable ad reserve leads Ms. Harris holds over Trump is in North Carolina — a state President Biden and Secretary Clinton narrowly lost in 2020 and 2016, respectively. The vice president is making an aggressive play for the state, which has only been won by Democratic presidential candidates twice in the last 50 years. President Obama won the state by just 14,000 votes out of more than 4 million cast in 2008. On Tuesday, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Governor Walz, made a solo appearance in the western liberal enclave of Asheville, where he made the case that Trump has no plan for the average North Carolinian. In May, the New York Sun spoke with a longtime representative from the state, Congressman David Price, who served in the House for more than three decades. At the time, when President Biden was still the presumptive candidate, Mr. Price said North Carolina may be the only state that Mr. Biden lost in 2020 that he had a chance of flipping in 2024. Four years ago, Mr. Biden lost the state by less than 1.5 percentage points — his narrowest loss of any state that year. Mr. Price said that the Democratic candidate likely had a “really good shot” of winning the state, especially given what he called the odiousness of the Republican candidate for governor this year, Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, who has been trailing behind the Democratic candidate, Attorney General Josh Stein, for months. “Male Hispanic and Black voters — especially from conservative religious backgrounds — have probably some susceptibility to Republican appeals. I think we’re really going to have to solidify those base voters,” Mr. Price said of the Democrats’ ability to win the state. “Robinson, though, has some unique liabilities apart from the racial considerations.”Senator Vance has been dispatched to the state several times since he was nominated in July. He is delivering an economic policy speech at Raleigh on Wednesday afternoon. Ms. Harris’s ads have focused mostly on a forward-looking vision for America, including her economic plans, her promise to protect abortion rights, and her desire to turn the page on Trump — which is unsurprising given the relatively low popularity of Mr. Biden and his record as the sitting president. On Wednesday, Ms. Harris released a new television ad featuring a Kentucky woman who was raped by her step father at just 12 years old, and decided to get an abortion back when her state allowed it. The woman, Hadley Duvall, was featured in an ad in the 2023 Kentucky gubernatorial race when she was campaigning for Governor Beshear, the popular Democratic incumbent. In her new ad for Ms. Harris’s team, Ms. Duvall blames Trump directly for the overturning of Roe. “Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose — even for rape or incest. Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom,” Ms. Duvall says at the end of the ad. The ad has not yet been reserved in specific states, and the release on Wednesday was preliminary before it goes up across the battleground contests. While a spokesman for Ms. Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment, it can be expected that the ad will go up in states that have implemented restrictions on abortion rights, including Georgia and North Carolina. The ad will also likely be played in Arizona, where a ballot question that could enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution will be decided by voters this November.

Harris Outpacing Trump in Ad Spending in Every Swing State, Including Long Shot North Carolina

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