It’s the final month of the 2024 presidential election, an affair that has felt bonkers for months.
Americans witnessed the sitting Democratic president drop out of the race, the Republican nominee narrowly escape an assassination attempt and the rise of the first woman of color on a national ticket.
Where are the candidates spending money?
Money isn’t everything in politics, but it’s certainly not nothing. Where the campaigns — and the super PACs that support them — spend funds is, if nothing else, a good indicator of where they see opportunity.
CNN’s David Wright who tracks spending, has noted how the Harris campaign focused her spending in the first week of October on the critical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump has been looking to the Sun Belt, but also spent the most on ads in Pennsylvania, proving it’s a linchpin to both sides’ strategies.
The policy proposals have been rolled out, and the candidates have tried to define each other. Now it’s time to get voters to the polls or the mailbox.
Voting early and by mail is already underway in much of the country, although early voting is not expected to reach the same level as it did in the Covid-19 pandemic election of 2020. Trump remains a mail-voting skeptic, but Republicans are embracing the practice in key states this year in an effort to keep pace with Democrats.
Harris has supporters to the left and supporters to the right, from popular high-profile Democrats like former President Barack Obama to disaffected anti-Trump Republicans like former Rep. Liz Cheney.
Trump will get bold-face support from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, but overall has fewer surrogates to turn to.
Read more here on what to watch.
