So far in June, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and her allies have spent $23.3 million on television ads in eight battleground states — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia — saturating the airwaves.
Republican candidate Donald Trump and his allies have spent $0.
For comparison, in June of 2012, President Obama and PACs supporting him dropped $45 million on TV ads in 11 contested states, while Republican Mitt Romney and his backers made $38 million in ad buys in the same markets that month.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Perhaps it is in light of this discrepancy that Donald Trump cast aside his much-vaunted plan to self-fund his election to send out his campaign's first "emergency" fundraising email Saturday. "Crooked Hillary is about to invade your TV with ads attacking Mr. Trump," the email said. "But we're preparing to fight back."
Continue reading for free
We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.
Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.