(DCWatchdog.com) – Candidates for the 2024 presidential nomination of the Republican Party will spend a combined total of roughly $1 billion on their race, the most enormous primary spending in party history, an estimate predicts.
The massive campaign expenditure projection is revealed in an analysis by OpenSecrets, a political spending tracker, which has pointed out that the final total would be conditional on how long the GOP primary race would last.
“It’s a lot of money to become a successful president in the end,” OpenSecrets research director Sarah Bryner told NPR, as cited by Newsmax.
The report notes that the 2020 presidential race cost nearly $6 billion, roughly four times the spending in the 2000 presidential election.
Counting in the campaign expenditures of congressional races, the 2020 figure swells to over $14 billion in total election spending – twice more than what US political candidates spent in the 2016 election.
However, the projected combined spending of $1 billion for a primary would be a first for the Republican Party – and it will be funded through a combination of campaign and Super Pac money.
“The wild card here is how much we can expect to see in fundraising and spending by super PACs,” Bryner said.
“Those are subject to a lot more fluctuation because you can have one billionaire come in, drop $1 million, and that really changes the fundraising game,” she explained.
Thus, in the last open Republican primary, in 2016, the combined total spending reached $768 million.
That included about $400 million spent by candidates’ campaigns, while the rest came from Super PACs, according to the former Campaign Finance Institute, now merged with Open Secrets.
Bryner noted that candidate spending in the 2024 GOP primary race would now likely surpass $500 million, and the Super Pacts would contribute roughly the same sum or slightly less.
The frontrunner, billionaire former President Donald Trump, typically raises lots of money from many small donors.
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis will use tens of millions remaining from his gubernatorial campaign, while GOP US Senator Tim Scott has $20 million from his Senate race.
North Dakota’s billionaire Governor Doug Burgum has begun campaigning with $3 million in ad spending.
GOP COULD SPEND $1 BILLION: Republicans reportedly are on track to spend about $1 billion in the GOP presidential nomination, the party's biggest splurge ever. https://t.co/vC8vjeDkvG
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) June 20, 2023
