With less 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 Democrats’ own committee, the DNC, 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 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 on how to deploy the money need not be made until after the party’s convention, which begins Sept. 9.

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Soorin Kim

Soorin Kim is a White House producer with MS NOW.