“Outside Money Favors Hillary Clinton at a 2-to-1 Rate Over Donald Trump”

NYT:

Six years after a Supreme Court decision opened vast new channels for money to flow into national elections, Democrats have built the largest and best-coordinated apparatus of outside groups operating in the 2016 presidential campaign, defying expectations that conservative and corporate wealth would dominate the race.

A dozen different organizations raised over $200 million through the beginning of October and since May have spent more than $110 million on television, digital, and radio ads in support of Hillary Clinton, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission through Thursday.

The handful of organizations backing Donald J. Trump have raised less than half that amount, a steep dive from four years ago, when wealthy Republicans poured hundreds of millions of dollars into groups backing the Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

The Democrats’ success this year reflects, in part, Mrs. Clinton’s close personal ties to her party’s elite donors and her allies’ willingness to exploit the 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case far more aggressively than President Obama did.

But the Democrats are also deeply indebted to one man: Mr. Trump, whose provocations and tirades — along with a loud crusade against his own party’s donors — have virtually shut off what once promised to be a half-billion-dollar spigot of outside money.

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