With fewer than 100 days until the November midterms, Democrats confront an increasingly uncomfortable truth: Republicans and their allied groups have opened a cash advantage of roughly half a billion dollars over Democrats. And the party’s own Democratic National Committee is already carrying more debt than money in the bank.

In their most recent filings, the Republican National Committee and its related House and Senate fundraising committees, along with super PACs aligned with President Donald Trump and the GOP leadership, reported a combined $1 billion to spend over the next few months. The DNC, its congressional counterparts and the major Democratic super PACs reported $404 million.

The DNC in particular has been underwater for much of the year, reporting more debt than cash on hand in each of the past eight months, according to its filings with the Federal Election Commission.

National party committees often raise less when the rival party holds the White House. But the DNC’s numbers point to a cash crunch that has dogged Democrats since the 2024 election — one that runs deeper than the party’s own tough stretch before the 2018 midterms, or the hole Republicans dug out of before 2022, when Joe Biden was president.

DNC Chair Ken Martin defended his party committee’s finances in a lengthy statement published on Substack last week, writing that the current DNC has raised more than any DNC without the White House in the party’s 198-year history. The cash-on-hand figures, he argued, reflect the fact that the DNC has been diligently investing in the “work required to win in 2025, 2026 and beyond.”

“If the question is whether the Democratic Party will be ready to win — everywhere, at every level, in this election and for the decade ahead — the answer is a resounding yes,” Martin wrote.

The gap between the two national committees is stark. The DNC entered July with $16 million in cash and $18 million in debt, while the RNC reported $129 million on hand and no debt. Republicans’ congressional committees also hold bigger reserves than their Democratic counterparts, though by smaller margins.

“I think the DNC is objectively in a bad place,” said a former DNC official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the party’s finances and pointed to donors’ disillusionment and eroded trust since the 2024 election.

The gap is widened further by Make America Great Again Inc., a Trump-aligned super PAC that has amassed $400 million over the past 18 months, drawing from loyal billionaires as well as newer donors eager to signal support for the president.

Both parties have super PACs tied to their congressional leadership, along with outside groups focused on individual races. But Democrats have nothing that rivals MAGA Inc. in size. The group has yet to convert much of its haul into spending on Republicans in 2025 or 2026, and it has not released a midterm strategy. A senior White House official told Politico that decisions about how to deploy the money need not be made until after the party’s convention, which begins Sept. 9.

Democrats counter that their candidates are outraising Republicans in many battleground races. In Texas, U.S. Senate Democratic candidate James Talarico has raised three times as much as Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff holds 20 times the cash on hand of his Republican challenger, Michael Collins. Party officials say the disparity reflects grassroots enthusiasm for individual candidates, even as the path to Senate control remains steep. They also note that Democrats have won races this cycle despite being outspent.

Republicans built their party-level reserves precisely because they expect Democratic candidates to hold that fundraising edge, said a GOP official who was granted anonymity to discuss the party’s strategy. The official said the recent Supreme Court ruling in NRSC v. FEC, which lets party committees coordinate spending directly with candidates, will hand Republicans an even greater advantage in the coming months.

“I think anyone who’s suggesting that we have to spend money right now is a little bit silly, and the suggestion that we will not be spending the money is also silly as well,” said the GOP official. “I can tell you that we are going to — at least on the RNC side — be spending as many dollars as we legally can.”

The former DNC official, now a Democratic strategist, said the cash crunch is likelier to bite in the 2028 presidential cycle than this year, with the party’s would-be contenders potentially forced to build their own fundraising operations. Even so, the strategist said, donors now on the sidelines will likely return ahead of 2028.

“I think there’s going to be a different level of enthusiasm once we’re in the cycle, I believe, because this is the first time in a very, very long time that we truly have such an open Democratic primary,” the strategist said about the 2028 election. “The money is going to funnel into the ecosystem again.” 

“I wouldn’t be worried about us losing an election because of the DNC’s fundraising,” the strategist said.

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