Former President Donald Trump spent over $37 million on television advertisements in seven key swing states Friday, with a heavy focus on targeting voters in Georgia.
According to ad tracking firm AdImpact, Friday’s purchase was the highest total for TV ads that Trump’s campaign has reserved on any single day in the 2024 election cycle. Of the $37.2 million in airtime reserved, $23.8 million was spent in Georgia. The next expensive state was North Carolina, where Trump reserved $4.4 million in TV ad space. Trump also reserved airtime in Michigan ($3.1 million), Wisconsin ($2 million), Arizona ($2 million), Nevada ($1.4 million) and Pennsylvania ($867,000).
The purchases are a major boost to Republican TV campaigning in the battleground states expected to be imperative to winning in November. AdImpact reported Friday morning that since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, GOP entities had spent $10.4 million in Georgia, outshining the $6.6 million that Democrats had spent on TV ads in the Peach State.
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Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaigns via email Friday night for comment.
Recent polling has shown Vice President Kamala Harris making gains in several swing states. Cook Political Report published on Thursday that Arizona, Nevada and Georgia were now considered “toss-up” states in its election analysis, a shift toward Harris. All three had previously been classified as “lean Republican.” A recent Ipsos survey also found Harris to hold a narrow lead across all seven swing states, and on Friday the vice president earned the best presidential polling results for Democrats in Nevada in more than a year.
Georgia appears to be one of the tightest races between Harris and Trump. A CNBC/All-America Economic survey released this week found that Harris was trailing Trump by 2 percentage points in the state. According to polling aggregate site FiveThirtyEight, Trump is leading by 0.7 points on average in Georgia.
Trump lost Georgia by just under 12,000 votes in 2020. The former president and his allies have repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that his loss to Biden was due to election fraud. Trump faces racketeering charges in Fulton County, accused of attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, alongside several co-defendants.
The former president has repeatedly clashed with Republicans in Georgia, including GOP Governor Brian Kemp, who has dismissed Trump’s accusations that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In a news conference from Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, Trump said that he was unsure if he would be able to repair his relationship with Kemp, telling reporters, “Without me, he wouldn’t be governor.”
“I got him elected, he was doing terribly,” Trump said, referring to his endorsement for Kemp while he was running for reelection in 2018. “When you get someone elected, they’re supposed to like you.”
Trump added during the presser that his campaign is going to win Georgia and said he is “leading in Georgia by a lot.”
