U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Bidenās campaign entered the final stretch of the race with a large cash advantage over President Donald Trump, disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission showed on Tuesday.
The former vice presidentās campaign outraised and outspent Trumpās re-election effort in September, with Bidenās political ads now much more prevalent on American television.
Bidenās upper hand in the money race is no guarantee of victory. Trump triumphed in the 2016 election despite being outspent by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that in the battleground states likely to decide the winner of the Nov. 3 election, the race is closer than in national polls, which put Biden well ahead of the president.
At the end of September, Bidenās campaign had about $177 million in cash, nearly triple the $63 million held by the Trump campaign.
Bidenās campaign took in $281 million during the month, more than three times as much as the $81 million Trumpās campaign raised, the disclosures show.
It spent more than double what Trumpās campaign did.
The Trump campaign spent less than $56 million on television and radio advertising in September, compared with nearly $148 million by Biden, according to Advertising Analytics LLC, a market research company.
This month, Bidenās campaign said that together with the Democratic Party, it had $432 million in the bank. Trump and his Republican Party had $251 million in the bank, his campaign said.
(Reporting by Jason Lange and Grant Smith; Editing by Sandra Maler, Peter Cooney and Gerry Doyle)