The two major candidates took in the equivalent of the GDP of Sierra Leone in their quest for the White House — and that doesn’t count super PAC fundraising. Republican supporter Sheldon Adelson and his wife are reported to have spent close to $90 million on their own.

According to Politico, Obama got more from small donors, and Romney still had cash on hand when the race was over.

Politico: Thursday’s filings lay bare those donations and other jaw-dropping financial details of the first modern presidential campaign in which donors could give unlimited contributions for political ads and in which both major party candidates declined to participate in a Watergate-era public financing system designed to limit fundraising. The reports also show how the two candidates and their allies navigated the new big-money system using divergent strategies until the bitter end. President Barack Obama’s campaign relied on smaller donors to fuel a robust ground game and summer advertising seeking to define Republican rival Mitt Romney, and then widened its fundraising advantage as the campaign reached its apex. But it was actually outspent by Romney and the big-donor-funded outside groups that supported him. They banked on larger donations to flood the airwaves in the final weeks to turn late-deciding voters against the incumbent in a backloaded strategy that left them with money in the bank at the end – typically a no-no in presidential politics. Read more

— Posted by Peter Z. Scheer.