A July memo from Democratic fundraisers contained a line that should have set off alarms across every blue-state campaign office in the country: "The organizations that registered and persuaded millions of voters to participate in the 2018 and 2022 midterms are drastically underfunded. They have raised nearly 40% less than they had at this point in those cycles."
Forty percent less. With five weeks to go.
The groups in question aren't fringe outfits. America Votes, the NAACP, Planned Parenthood, the League of Conservation Voters, the AFL-CIO, SEIU — these are the backbone of the Democratic turnout machine. The entire infrastructure Democrats have relied on to register voters, knock on doors, and drag reluctant supporters to the polls is running dramatically short of cash heading into November's midterms.
PBS News confirmed the scale of the problem, reporting that Democratic operatives "are worried that many grassroots groups will not be able to mount effective registration and get-out-the-vote efforts." That's not a Republican talking point. That's Democrats describing their own situation.
The advertising gap tells the rest of the story. According to ad-tracking firm AdImpact, Republicans have reserved $682 million in advertising through Election Day. Democrats have reserved $491 million — a $191 million shortfall, or 39% less than the GOP. In Ohio alone, Republicans hold a $30 million ad advantage. Across nine competitive Senate races, the Republican edge totals $127 million, with the GOP leading in eight of the nine. In Texas, the spending ratio is 8-to-1.
Meanwhile, the financial health of the party committees themselves reads like a balance sheet from a company about to file Chapter 11. The RNC reported $128 million cash on hand in early September. The DNC is carrying $750,000 in debt. MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC, is sitting on $416 million.
RNC Chair Joe Gruters expects the GOP to claim 220 seats in the House and 53 in the Senate. That's not wishful thinking from someone looking at the same polls everyone else sees. That's a projection from someone who can see what the other side's checkbook looks like.
The standard Democratic response to fundraising shortfalls is to point to 2022 and argue that money doesn't determine outcomes. The organizations listed in that July memo — America Votes, Planned Parenthood, the AFL-CIO — are the same ones that powered the 2022 midterm results Democrats love to cite. Those organizations now have 40% less funding than they had during the cycle they keep referencing as proof that money doesn't matter.
Karl Rove, writing in the Wall Street Journal, posed the question Democrats don't want to answer: "What if much of what we think we know about the midterms is wrong?" Rove pointed out that Republicans have "juicy targets in opponents who are Democratic Socialists of America members" carrying "a collection of dangerous, obnoxious and crazy ideas." The combination of underfunded turnout operations and candidates running on DSA platforms in competitive districts isn't a messaging problem. It's a structural one.
The pattern here is worth noting. After the 2024 presidential disaster, Democratic donors didn't just close their wallets — they started asking where all the money went. The grassroots fundraising machine that powered the party through two midterm cycles has now contracted by nearly half at the exact moment it's supposed to be surging. The organizations that are supposed to be registering voters and running get-out-the-vote operations are sending memos about being "drastically underfunded" instead of sending canvassers to doorsteps.
The RNC has $128 million in the bank. The DNC has $750,000 in debt. That's not a gap. That's a different sport.
