Trump Money vs Clinton Money: Why Trump Will Lose

The Trump Money vs Clinton money question shows Trump losing by a landslide when we follow the money by fundraising, gender and even gambling. First, as of 7/28/16, Clinton has out-fundraised Trump by a four to one margin. That’s staggering. That not only means Clinton is better armed for the coming media battle but it also says something shocking about her relative popularity. Second, the fundraising gender gap is telling. Donors of Clinton money skew slightly female, but donors of Trump money are overwhelmingly male. There are nearly three times as many men giving money to Trump as there are women. It means that in a country that’s about half female, Trump may have already lost about a quarter of potential voters. Finally, look at the Vegas betting odds. Oddsmakers put Clinton as the four to one favorite where gambling is concerned. We break out the details below, along with tables showing who’s giving money to each candidate.

Clinton Money Beats Trump Money in a Landslide

Trump Money vs Clinton Money: The Fundraising Landslide
Clinton Money$374,400,000
Trump Money$91,400,000

As the table above shows, as of 7/28/16 Hillary Clinton has raised $374.4 million to Trump’s $91.4 million. That means there’s about four times more Clinton money than Trump money. That’s cash Clinton can use for four times more ads, four times more campaign stops and four times more everything than Trump. Astute readers will of course point out that Trump is worth billions (more than ten billion according to Trump) but in the first place that sum has been called into question and in the second most of it is tied up in the operation of his business empire. Could Trump donate $300 million to his campaign? Probably. Whether he’s worth $3 billion or $10, he can probably scare up enough cash to beat Clinton’s fundraising success. But the real point here is what Clinton’s cash victory means for her popularity. Donations are a kind of voting done with the checkbook, and by that measure, Clinton has already won in a landslide.

Trump Money vs Clinton Money Fundraising

Trump Money vs Clinton Money by Gender: Where Are Trump’s Women?

Trump Money vs Clinton Money by Gender
GenderClinton MoneyTrump Money
Female53.80%27.20%
Male46.20%72.80%

Trump MoneyThe table above shows perhaps an even more eye-popping statistic: Women aren’t chipping in to the Trump money fund. Looking at Clinton first, it’s clear that the candidate appeals slightly more to the charitable feelings of women than men. 53.8% of Clinton’s individual donors are female vs 46.2% male. That’s a difference of nearly 8%. That’s telling. it doesn’t necessarily follow that 8% less men will vote for Clinton, but it does show a stronger sentiment in the hearts of women voters for Clinton. A look at Trump money source is enough to make us forget about Clinton’s gender gap. Fully 72.8% of all Trump’s individual (non-corporate and non-group) donors are male. That leaves only 27.2% female. That’s outright shocking. Again, it doesn’t mean women aren’t going to vote for Trump, but it is certainly suggestive. Looking only at the gender of each candidate’s donors, one could conclude that Trump can’t win. Why? Plain old math. The country is split almost 50/50 between men and women. Despite outcries to the contrary, women tend to vote just as much or even more than men do. Bill Clinton won the ’92 election with only 54% of women voters, while men were split evenly. The chart below shows Clinton and Trump money by gender of the donors. One flaw is that it can seem like both candidates have raised equal money: they haven’t. In reality Trump’s overall money raised is about 1/4 of Clinton’s.

Clinton Money Trump Money Gender Donations

Vegas Bets the Smart Money on Clinton

Clinton MoneyAnother place the Trump money vs Clinton money statistics lean toward Hillary is in Vegas. Why is that important? Vegas oddsmakers earn their living from being able to figure the odds of any contest in advance. Sometimes they’re wrong, but most often they’re right. In this case, they’ve picked Clinton as the four to one favorite over Trump. The table below shows the odds as -240 for Clinton and +200 for Trump. What that means is that a bettor who lays down a $240 bet that Clinton will win can only make $100 if he’s right. The same bettor can lay down only $100 on Trump and make $200 if Trump wins. Bookies, Casinos and online gambling venues aren’t run by dummies. They write the odds so that no matter what happens, they come out on top. It’s clear that their path to coming out on top in 2016 is based very much on the strong odds that Clinton will win.

Trump vs Clinton Betting Odds
Hillary Clinton -240
Donald Trump +200

The L.A. Times poll below may make a Trump victory look certain, but the money disagrees.

The 1% Give their Money to Clinton

The table below shows the top 10 Clinton money donors. It’s been said over and over in the media and by protestors that the richest 1% of the nation controls the outcomes of our elections. That was the basic rallying cry of Bernie Sanders‘ supporters speaking out against Hillary Clinton. Whether it’s true or not, that 1% appears to be solidly behind Hillary Clinton. The list of Clinton’s top 10 donors includes five large investment firms. To be fair, it also includes a nonprofit, a biotech firm, two labor unions and a media business devoted to ethnic news stories. Does this mean Clinton is in Wall Street’s pocket? That’s certainly on the table for speculation, but the point of this article is to show how the money points to a Clinton victory. If it’s true that the 1% will decide the election (a big if) then Trump will lose. That’s because that same 1% are not giving their money to Trump.

Top Clinton Money Donors
GroupTypeMoney
Saban Capital Group, Inc.Private investment firm$10,036,238
Renaissance Technologies LLCInvestment management firm$9,518,800
Pritzker Group Private CapitalVenture capital firm$7,873,257
Soros Fund Management LLCHedge fund$7,044,600
Paloma Partners LLCSecurities firm$6,108,400
Newsweb CorporationEthnic media firm$5,013,500
DE Shaw Research (DESRES)Biotech firm$3,053,601
The Center for Middle East PeaceNonprofit lobbyist firm$3,008,100
Plumbers and Pipefitters UnionLabor union$3,007,275
The Laborers UnionLabor union$3,006,610

Related: Hillary Clinton Net Worth

The 99% Won’t Donate to Trump

Trump Money vs Clinton MoneyWhat about the rest of the voters? The ones outside the 1%? They’re not kicking in any Trump money either. It’s true that Trump’s election fund does get a lot more of its money from small donors than Clinton’s does. Clinton gets only 19% of her money from small donations by individual donors. 68% of her money comes from large corporations and organizations. Trump meanwhile gets his money about evenly from small donations by citizens and from large chunks of money from businesses and groups. However, there’s a lot less of it. In fact, those small donors have kicked in $50.8 million to Clinton and only $24.6 million to Trump. That’s about half. This may be in part because Trump appeals to a poorer subset of the population. In the book Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance, the Yale educated, Appalachian-clan raised author makes the point that Trump’s appeal is strongest among poor and uneducated whites. If he’s right, Trump’s supporters may be behind him fervently, but they may not have the cash their candidate needs to sail to victory in November.

One argument in favor of the idea that Trump could win is that he has already proved droves of naysayers wrong. Early in the primary season he was given slim odds of going the distance and he’s since taken his party’s nomination in a landslide. The error in logic comes when voters assume a victory in the Republican party can translate to a win in the general election. A recent Gallup poll shows the U.S. split between 43% democrats and 39% republicans. While Trump may have won more than 50% of that 39%, it doesn’t follow that he can win more than half of all democrats. He would need to in order to take the election. Not only does the money show him losing, the voter numbers are all but insurmountable.

Who Donates to Trump?

If Clinton is getting more of the money from the 1% than Trump and more of the money from the 99% than Trump, then where is the Trump money coming from? Trump’s top 10 fundraising sources are shown in the table below. His #1 donor demographic is retired people. According to U.S. Census data, Americans age 65 and older make up about 13% of the total population. That Trump’s biggest donors are from a small subset of the population doesn’t bode well for him. Further, it’s not as if he corners the market on that old-age money. While Trump has received $3.8 million from retirees, Clinton has taken in $31.6 million from that same group.

Top Trump Money Donors (By industry)
Retireees$3,840,878
Real Estate$678,173
Miscellaneous Business$415,250
Miscellaneous Finance$374,700
Healthcare Professionals$365,321
Non-Profits$232,486
Lawyers and Law Firms$194,198
TV, Movies and Music$183,597
General Contractors$176,101
Insurance Firms$111,645

Related: What is Bernie Sanders’ Net Worth?

Sanders Money May Become Clinton Money

To put the final nail in the Trump money coffin, let’s take a look at what happens to all the money Bernie Sanders raised over the course of his campaign. Sanders raised $228 million. However, he spent about $220 million. That leaves him with $8 million left over. Presumably, that money will now revert to the DNC and fall into Clinton’s hands. It’s “only” $8 million, so not enough to make a gigantic difference in the outcome of the 2016 election. That said, what will happen to all the future donations from the Sanders crowd? There is some evidence that it won’t go toward Clinton’s campaign. Sanders supporters are by and large disgruntled with the loss of their candidate. However, as the election nears, most pundits believe those disgruntled voters will come firmly into the Clinton camp. That can only further the money victory of a candidate who was already leading her opponent four to one in the fundraising war.

If you liked reading about Trump money vs Clinton money, try this post on Donald Trump’s net worth or this one on how much money YouTube is worth.

Sources:

Trump Money and Clinton Money stats from Opensecrets.org