Kamala Harris Presidential Bid Costs $1.37B on Ads Alone

Public filing by the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has revealed that the presidential hopeful spent as much as $2.3 billion on her campaign leading up to November 5’s election. Although running a fairly short campaign, Harris’ media expenses had soared, as the Vice President sought to quickly secure ground in crucial battleground states.

Political Ads Fail to Sway Voters Despite Harris’ Omnipresence

However, none of this seems to have paid off, as President-elect Trump achieved a thumping victory in all seven “toss-up” states, she had set out to win.

Polls that put the two candidates’ neck-and-neck once again fell wide of the mark, with prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket, and even traditional bookmakers, proving far better equipped to analyze public opinion. BetOnline, for example, knew that Trump would emerge victorious from the race weeks in advance, or at least the odds suggested as much.

The public filings of both campaigns have revealed that President-elect Trump spent about $500 million less on his media placement, but this could also have to do with the fact that he had been skillfully navigating social media, jumping on a podcast with Joe Rogan and basking in the online popularity of celebrities such as Elon Musk and Adin Ross, a tech billionaire and a streamer respectively.

Despite the financial war chest Harris’ team was able to muster over such a short period of time, Trump was the one to win not only the electoral college vote, with 295 votes cast his way but similarly – the popular vote, delivering a drubbing to his Democratic opponent.

Don’t Trust the Pollsters, Trust Prediction Markets Instead

The present results and the amount of spending also show how much traditional political strategies work any longer in the new political order shaped by the President-elect.

Polymarket, a blockchain-based platform that runs prediction markets on US elections, and other political races, was able to rightly predict that President Joe Biden would step down from a reelection bid and that Harris would lose to Trump.

In the meantime, these same prediction markets are facing increased scrutiny. Kalshi has been able to fend off the Commodity Futures Trading Commission by winning a court case, but the platform could be further challenged.

In the meantime, in Europe, Polymarket could be blocked in France, after the French Gaming Authority said that it would investigate the platform for possibly offering unauthorized betting products.