Hillary Clinton built an unprecedented high-dollar fundraising apparatus. | AP Photo Clinton’s homestretch cash advantage: $99 million The Democratic nominee, along with her party and super PAC allies, has far more money to burn than Trump’s forces.

Hillary Clinton’s forces had nearly 2 ½ times more cash to burn than Donald Trump’s team over the campaign’s final three weeks, according to a POLITICO analysis of reports filed Thursday night with the Federal Election Commission.

The reports, which cover the period from Oct. 1 to Oct. 19, show that Clinton’s campaign committee, its joint committees with the Democratic Party and the super PACs devoted to her finished the period with $172 million in the bank, compared to $73 million for Trump’s campaign, joint committees with the GOP and super PACs.


POLITICO analysis found that Clinton’s cash advantage expanded during the first three weeks of the month, when her campaign and its allies brought in $120 million compared to only $65 million for Trump’s.

That commanding financial lead figures to grow even further in the final three weeks before Election Day, since Clinton’s campaign and its joint committee had dozens of fundraisers planned with high-profile surrogates including Cher, Jay Z and Jennifer Lopez.

Trump, on the other hand, had not scheduled any fundraisers after Oct. 19 for his joint committees with the Republican National Committee, with which Trump’s campaign has had a fraught relationship.

All of it adds up to a massive financial and infrastructure advantage for Clinton and her allied committees, which had dramatically outspent Trump and his forces over the course of the campaign on everything from television advertising to swing state field offices and staffing.

Notably, Trump, a billionaire real estate showman who largely self-funded his GOP primary campaign and has taken to boasting that he would spend $100 million on his campaign before Election Day, was nowhere near that mark as of the period covered by Thursday’s reports. He donated $31,000 to his campaign during the first three weeks of this month to bring his self-funding total to $56.1 million for the campaign.

Perhaps ironically, though, Trump has raised a substantially higher percentage of his cash from small donors than Clinton. The candidates each brought in around $8.5 million this month from donors who have given $200 or less. Small donors tend to give online, often in response to appeals pegged to news events in the campaign.

That could explain Trump’s fundraising surge on the day that The Washington Post published a decade-old recording from the files of the television program “Access Hollywood” in which Trump boasted about groping and kissing women without their consent. The Trump campaign sought to rally his supporters by casting the report as part of a media vendetta against him, though the $11.5 million haul on that day does not include donations of $200 or less, since those aren’t itemized by date in FEC reports.

Clinton, on the other hand, built an unprecedented high-dollar fundraising apparatus.

A trio of super PACs devoted to Clinton raised a total of $205 million for the cycle, most of which came into the main super PAC devoted to her campaign, Priorities USA Action.

It has raised $176 million for the cycle, including $18 million this month, when it brought in $2 million or more from three donors — Connecticut philanthropist Susan Mandel, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner.

The big checks vacuumed up by Priorities fueled a $24.8-million spending spree in the first three weeks of the month.

By contrast, the super PACs supporting Trump, who openly disparaged super PACs and big donors during the primary, were slow to launch and have trailed far behind. They raised only $70.4 million for the cycle, including $2.2 million in the first three weeks of this month, as they competed with another for checks.

This analysis does not, however, include the October fundraising tallies of Future45, a super PAC funded by major Republican donors including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts.

It was not required to file a report because it did not make any expenditures between Oct. 1 and Oct. 19, the period covered by the pre-general report.