Democrats splash out on ads while JD Vance asks Peter Thiel for cash

Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown! As we bid an unofficial goodbye to summer, let’s talk about:

• The state of the fundraising race

• Moms for Liberty and Trump

• Growing voter enthusiasm

Kamala Harris has big plans for her $540mn fundraising bonanza: lots and lots of ads.

She has bet that spending $370mn on ads between now and election day will pay off in the form of a larger and more sustainable polling lead.

The campaign announced over the weekend that it planned to book $170mn in television advertisements nationally and in swing states from September 3 to November 5, along with $200mn of online ads to mount what it said would be the biggest digital ad campaign in US history.

Despite the vice-president’s fundraising surge, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said they were still the “clear underdogs” in the race against Donald Trump and were expecting a “razor-thin” margin on election day.

So far, Harris’s campaign and affiliated groups have shelled out $730mn on TV, radio and digital ads compared with the $366mn by Trump’s campaign and its allies, according to the FT’s election ad tracker.

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Harris was leading Trump by 3.7 percentage points nationally, according to the FT’s election polling average. She was also ahead in four battleground states.

Meanwhile, on the Republican ticket, Trump’s running mate JD Vance is calling for tech billionaire Peter Thiel to get off the sidelines of the cash race.

Vance wants Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir — and Vance’s ex-boss from his Silicon Valley days — to wade into the fray and bankroll the Republicans’ White House bid [free to read].

As the vice-presidential candidate told the FT’s Alex Rogers:

I’m going to keep on talking to Peter and persuading him that — you know he’s obviously been exhausted by politics a little bit — but he’s going to be really exhausted by politics if we lose and if Kamala Harris is president.

He is fundamentally a conservative guy, and I think that he needs to get off the sidelines and support the ticket.

Trump and Vance need to build up their war chest as they struggle to mount effective attacks on Harris, and the Republicans have been particularly reliant on cheques from megadonors to fill their coffers.

But it seems as if Thiel is unlikely to heed their call — he’s been reluctant to support any politicians this year, despite giving to Republicans in 2016 and funding Vance’s 2022 US Senate run.

Who will win the 2024 presidential election? Join FT journalists for an exclusive subscriber webinar on September 12, as panelists assess who is likely to prevail in the race for the White House. Register for free here.

Campaign clips: the latest election headlines

• Harris says she opposes the takeover of US Steel by Japan’s Nippon Steel, as she courts blue-collar voters in industrial swing states. 

• Trump is considering the establishment of a commission of US business chiefs to audit US agencies and identify programmes to cut. (The Washington Post)

• Voters have the most favourable view of the US’s trajectory since at least 2021, according to a poll conducted last month. (WSJ)

• The elite of Silicon Valley is alarmed by a long-shot part of Harris’s tax plan that goes after unrealised gains. [Free to read] 

• Though Harris has said she no longer supports a fracking ban, Big Oil is still demanding that she clarify her energy and climate policies further. 

• Trump has said he will vote against enshrining abortion rights in Florida’s state constitution, thrusting the Democrats’ strongest issue back into the spotlight.

Behind the scenes

Harris has a significant lead among women voters (an ABC News/Ipsos poll from the weekend gave her a 13-point advantage) but Trump is still trying to court them. In particular, he’s after the votes of women who live in swing state suburbs.

On Friday, the Republican candidate sat for a fireside chat at the national conference of Moms for Liberty, an organisation focused on limiting gender-, sexuality- and race-related topics in public school curricula. Many of women in attendance were dressed in Trump-Vance T-shirts, red Maga baseball caps and even customised bedazzled members’ jackets declaring their support for the ex-president, according to the FT’s Lauren Fedor.

“Several conference attendees — sipping wine and cocktails from plastic cups at the cash bar as an 80s cover band performed ahead of Trump’s appearance — told me it was ‘exciting’ and ‘cool’ to have him address their group,” Lauren said.

Jennifer Garland, a 46-year-old mother of five boys, said Trump was a much better representative for those in the room than Harris. She told Lauren:

You don’t have to like him as a person. But what does he stand for? What is he going to bring for the country? What is he going to bring for us as parents?

I definitely think I’m going to get more parental rights out of Trump than anyone else at the moment. He is the best person for the job.

Datapoint

Democrats’ enthusiasm about voting is nearing levels not seen since Barack Obama first ran for president.

In August, 78 per cent of Democrats and independents leaning the party’s way said they were more excited than usual to vote in November’s election, up from 55 per cent in March, according to a Gallup poll.

In a show of how Harris has revitalised the party since replacing Biden on the ticket, Democrats’ level of enthusiasm is now 1 percentage point shy of where they measured when Obama was building his political movement during the 2008 Democratic primaries.

Republicans have had a smaller bump in excitement, with 64 per cent saying in August that they were more enthusiastic about this year’s election than previous years, compared with 59 per cent in March. The August figure, though, is nearing the high-water mark that the party hit in 2020, during Trump’s second run for office.

Overall, 69 per cent of US adults said they were enthusiastic than usual about voting this year, up from 54 per cent in March. It’s the highest level Gallup has clocked in a presidential election, with similar figures last recorded in 2008 and 2004.

With these numbers, Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones wrote that “voter participation could surpass what it was in 2020, when two-thirds of eligible US adults cast ballots, the highest in over 100 years”.

Viewpoints

• Jemima Kelly breaks down why Trump is so rattled by the Democrats “weird” attacks.

• The received wisdom that Trumpism will outlast Trump is shakier than it was four years ago, writes Janan Ganesh

• Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor explains Democrats’ risky bet that with a Black and Indian woman at the helm, people will forget the big promises the party made four years ago to address racial and economic injustices. (The New Yorker)

• Elon Musk’s endorsement of Trump is one example of how the billionaire chief executive is an unguided geopolitical missile, writes Gideon Rachman.

• Trump’s call for a bitcoin strategic reserve idea is dangerous because it would threaten the dollar’s reserve currency status, cautions Vitaliy Katsenelson.