First you get the money, then you get the voters, then you get the power
People often ask me why I think the Democrats will win the presidential election and expand their majorities in Congress in 2008. My answer is simple: they’re raising more money. I am not a fan of the current campaign financing system, but, like it or not, the candidates and parties that raise more money are the candidates and parties that generally win elections.
We’ve already detailed the massive fundraising advantage the Demoratic Senate and House campaign committees have over their Republican counterparts. The comparison is even more striking in the presidential race, where the top two Democratic fundraisers — Hillary and Obama — are outraised the top Republican candidates at a rate of close to two to one in the last quarter. Here’s the Times on this issue:
The Democratic presidential candidates continued to raise significantly more money during the last three months than their Republican counterparts, according to official and unofficial third-quarter fund-raising tallies that were released yesterday.
Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, raised at least $20 million over the summer, more than $19 million of which could be spent on the primary — showing that he continued to be a formidable fund-raiser. It was unclear whether he still led in fund-raising, as he did this spring, because Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton did not release her tally. (Her aides had said that they expected to raise a similar amount.) John Edwards raised $7 million, and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico raised $5.2 million.
By comparison, Mitt Romney, who has been one of the strongest Republican fund-raisers this election, raised only about half of what Mr. Obama raised this summer, according to a senior adviser who was granted anonymity to discuss the campaign’s finances. The adviser said that Mr. Romney brought in about $10 million from donors, and that he used more than $6 million of his own money for his campaign.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who replaced his chief fund-raiser at the end of the quarter, did not release a tally, but said over the weekend that he thought he would “do as well as the other Republicans — maybe we will do better than some.†Fred D. Thompson raised at least $8 million in his first quarter as a candidate, according to people involved with the campaign — less than the other leading candidates raised early in their campaigns.
If you want to know which party will win the White House, watch the fundraising numbers. They’re a much more accurate gauge than the hypothetical match-up polls we’re always hearing about.
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[...] like to see more about the kinds of numbers that indicate how the 2008 elections will go. Earlier, I told you that the Democrats were currently swamping the Republicans in terms of fundraising. It also looks [...]