Republicans are facing a harsh political environment, but they enter the final weeks of the midterm elections with the financial upper hand.

The party and its allies are planning to spend about $221 million more on advertising than Democrats and their allies from Monday through Election Day, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. That total takes into account spending on Senate, House and state races.

And conservative outside groups and party committees hold a comfortable edge over their liberal counterparts in fundraising, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission that were released Sunday. That money will mainly be spent on paid media like advertising, which strategists believe can move the needle in competitive elections — though a financial advantage is not always decisive.

President Donald Trump’s super political action committee, MAGA Inc., reported having $416 million on hand entering this month. In recent weeks, the group has begun spending some of that enormous war chest, helping give Republicans their big advertising advantage. There is no Democratic super PAC with nearly as much money as MAGA Inc.

Republicans’ national party committees also have far more cash than their Democratic counterparts. The Republican National Committee entered this month with about $126 million on hand. The Democratic National Committee, which has faced internal chaos and struggled badly to raise money, was $750,000 in debt.

The House Republicans’ main campaign committee had an advantage in cash on hand of roughly $13 million over the House Democrats’ committee. The equivalent committee for Senate Republicans trailed its Democratic counterpart in cash on hand — but that was only because the Republican group was spending earlier. It spent $46 million in August to support the party’s candidates, the filings show, while the Democratic group spent just $1 million during the same month.

Democrats’ one big financial advantage in the midterms has come at the candidate level: The party’s Senate candidates have significantly outraised their Republican rivals in previous financial reports. But updated data on the candidate-versus-candidate fundraising fight won’t be available until next month.

In the final stretch before Election Day, as groups and campaigns often try to drain their bank accounts down to $0, spending data is generally more revealing than fundraising data.

And in eight of the top nine Senate races, Republicans have an advantage over Democrats on advertising spending, according to AdImpact, with a gap as big as roughly $30 million in Ohio. That gap is expected to grow by tens of millions of dollars now that the cryptocurrency industry is spending for the Republican candidate there, too.

In races for the Senate, the House and state offices, Republicans are now set to spend about $888 million on ads versus the Democrats’ roughly $666 million.

That Republican edge is powered by outside groups. Of the $350 million reserved for ads by Republicans in those nine races, only about one-tenth of that comes from campaigns and party committees.

But candidates and committees get cheaper ad rates than outside groups do — so Democratic candidates are hoping to raise enough money themselves that they can effectively do more with less.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By: Theodore Schleifer/Kenny Holston

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