This is a (very late) campaign finance article looking at the 2024 GOP Presidential candidates, and how their spending is correlated with their standing in the polls and probability of winning.
In the aftermath of McCain-Feingold, Citizens United, Speechnow, and Wisconsin Right to Life, candidates for President cannot hope to be competitive without relying on outside Super PACs to support their candidacies. This New York Times piece on GOP presidential campaign finances from July breaks down fundraising by the different sources and illustrates the complexity of tracking political fundraising.
Below is a summary of current PredictIt share prices, current GOP primary polling, and combined campaign and Super PAC fundraising totals from June 30th. We’re using the primary Super PAC for each candidate and not including any finance data from state-level PACs, Leadership PACs, or additional Super or Hybrid PACs.
| Candidate | Super PAC | PredictIt Price | Polling AVG | Latest Poll | Poll End Date | Pollster | Comb. Receipts | Comb. Disbursements |
| Trump | Save America | $ 0.57 | 52 | 65 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 46,807,695.14 | $ 50,623,887.89 |
| DeSantis | Never Back Down Inc. | $ 0.28 | 23 | 17 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 151,075,352.84 | $ 42,031,916.39 |
| Scott | Trust In the Mission PAC | $ 0.06 | 4 | 2 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 26,921,295.74 | $ 12,544,892.51 |
| Ramaswamy | American Exceptionalism PAC | $ 0.04 | 4 | 4 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 19,669,810.43 | $ 10,414,623.35 |
| Burgum | Best of America PAC | 0 | 0 | 6/29/2023 | YouGov Blue | $ 22,799,800.93 | $ 8,117,270.51 | |
| Haley | SFA Fund, Inc. | $ 0.05 | 4 | 3 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 29,165,750.37 | $ 5,297,260.51 |
| Hutchinson | America Strong and Free Action Inc. | 1 | 1 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 2,857,485.26 | $ 1,534,665.47 | |
| Pence | Committed to America PAC | $ 0.04 | 7 | 2 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 3,901,450.74 | $ 981,179.53 |
| Hurd | Future Leaders Fund | 0 | 6/26/2023 | Morning Consult | $ 934,351.80 | $ 562,315.72 | ||
| Christie | Tell It Like It Is PAC | $ 0.05 | 3 | 2 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 7,542,806.68 | $ 493,747.91 |
| Elder | We’ve Got a Country to Save | 0 | 6/29/2023 | Clarity | $ 475,331.11 | $ 142,914.33 |
There is a weaker correlation between fundraising and polling averages (r=0.4762) than between the amount spent and polling averages (r=0.9173). The correlation between polling averages and PredictIt estimated share prices was near perfect (r=0.9953).
Below we’ll look at candidates based on how much their campaign and respective Super PAC have cumulatively spent with their respective polling averages:
Tier 1: Trump & DeSantis
Unsurprisingly, the two candidates who raised and spent the most were first and second on FiveThirtyEight and PredictIt. Governor Ron DeSantis had already begun his slow and steady decline in the polls.
Tier 2: Scott, Ramaswamy, Burgum, & Haley
In the second tier of candidates, who spent $5 to $13 million, three of the next four (Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, and Nikki Haley) were polling abysmally (4%, 4%, 0%, and 4%). One of the highest polling in the second tier – Ramaswamy at 4% – is a political novice who is technically not even registered Republican.
Tier 3: Hutchinson, Pence, Hurd, Christie, Elder
The third tier of candidates spent less than $5 million and is filled out with former Governor Asa Hutchinson (1%), former Vice-President Mike Pence (7%), former Congressman Will Hurd (N/A), former Governor Chris Christie (3%), and radio talk show host Larry Elder (N/A). None of these were surprising except Pence, particularly that a former Vice-President from Indiana (not named Dan Quayle) would be polling single digits in a presidential race.
Fun fact: Quayle finished 8th in the 1999 Iowa Republican Straw Poll, the same place Pence finished among Republicans in the 2023 Iowa State Fair Straw Poll.
Three Months Later
Here is an updated table with current PredictIt share prices, FiveThirtyEight polling averages, and the latest poll for each candidate:
| Candidate | Super PAC | PredictIt Price | Polling AVG | Latest Poll | Poll End Date | Pollster |
| Trump | Save America | $ 0.75 | 55.3 | 61 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| DeSantis | Never Back Down Inc. | $ 0.08 | 13.7 | 13 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Scott | Trust In the Mission PAC | $ 0.02 | 2.2 | 1 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Ramaswamy | American Exceptionalism PAC | $ 0.06 | 6.4 | 7 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Burgum | Best of America PAC | $ 0.01 | 0.8 | 1 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Haley | SFA Fund, Inc. | $ 0.12 | 7.9 | 7 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Hutchinson | America Strong and Free Action Inc. | $ 0.01 | 0.5 | 0 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Pence | Committed to America PAC | $ 0.02 | 3.3 | 5 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Hurd | Future Leaders Fund | 0.1 | 0 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult | |
| Christie | Tell It Like It Is PAC | $ 0.03 | 2.8 | 3 | 10/1/2023 | Morning Consult |
| Elder | We’ve Got a Country to Save | 0 | 9/30/2023 | InsiderAdvantage |
We see little has changed. Trump faces more legal issues but has ticked upward in the polls while DeSantis continues to sink. Ramaswamy and Haley are neck-and-neck in a battle for distant third place, with Haley recently passing him on PredictIt and the FiveThirtyEight polling average.
The remainder of the field – three former Governors, one sitting U.S. Senator, one former Congressman, one former Vice-President, and one radio talk show host – have failed to break out of the low single digits. Pence’s polling average has actually fallen further, now around 3%. Here is the net change among PredictIt estimated share prices and FiveThirtyEight polling averages:
| Candidate | PredictIt Change | Polling Change |
| Trump | $0.18 | 3.5 |
| DeSantis | -$0.20 | -9.7 |
| Scott | -$0.04 | -1.5 |
| Ramaswamy | $0.02 | 2.6 |
| Burgum | $0.01 | 0.5 |
| Haley | $0.07 | 3.9 |
| Hutchinson | $0.01 | -0.7 |
| Pence | -$0.02 | -3.3 |
| Hurd | N/A | N/A |
| Christie | -$0.02 | 0.2 |
| Elder | N/A | N/A |
Methodology
FEC data is from the reporting period closing on June 30, 2023, and does not include Independent Expenditures. PredictIt price data was captured on June 30th at 10:24 a.m. FiveThirtyEight polling averages are from June 30th and the ‘latest poll’ was the most recent national poll available on June 30th from a survey with only a single matchup.
PredictIt lists four prices for each contract. The following formula was used to find an estimated price for one individual contract:
(bestBuyYesCost + (1-bestBuyNoCost) + BestSellYesCost + (1- BestSellNoCost)) / 4
Please note that PredictIt share prices are not equivalent to the poll numbers. Elder and Hurd do not have contracts on PredictIt at this moment and neither had a FiveThirtyEight polling average on June 30th. Prices for Hutchinson and Burgum required a workaround (assigning 1 to ‘bestBuyNoCost’) because of a lack of liquidity.
The code used can be found here. The data used can be found here:
- PredictIt API
- FiveThirtyEight 2024 presidential polling averages
- FiveThirtyEight polling data
- FEC Presidential candidates summary
- FEC All candidates & PAC summary bulk data
Further Analysis
In the future, it would be helpful to include IEs in the combined totals.
Fundraising obviously doesn’t explain everything and future analysis should quantify media coverage for each GOP candidate. Google Trends is relative to each candidate, so that wouldn’t be helpful, particularly comparing with a former President. X/Twitter would have been a good option for measuring media coverage and sentiment analysis until the recent API changes.