How the Democrats spent $1 billion and still lost

Vice President Kamala Harris lost her bid for the White House on Wednesday despite spending most of the funds on an expansive ground operation, staffing and a flood of ads. President-elect Donald Trump won a second term with half of what Harris’s campaign spent.

Harris’s fundraising dominance, which her campaign had touted, wasn’t enough to overcome political headwinds, including shifts in demographic support and an economic malaise that left much of the electorate soured on the Biden administration in which she served.

Harris only started her campaign after President Biden stepped aside on July 21. The morning after Biden dropped out, her campaign raised about $50 million in grassroots donations. Within a week, her campaign had $200 million as Democratic donors went wild for her whirlwind bid for the presidency, invigorated by her sudden elevation to the top of the ticket.

Her campaign allocated money for ads highlighting controversial comments by Trump, especially in swing states, and more than $36 million on in-person and digital outreach. But it didn’t convince a swath of working-class voters, Hispanics and white men that she was better than another four years of Trump. She underperformed with those groups compared with Biden in 2020, according to data from AP VoteCast.

The Harris campaign—her principal committee, associated fundraising committee and the Democratic National Committee—spent more than $654.6 million on ads from when she took over on July 22 through Election Day. During that period, Trump spent $378.9 million on advertising, according to the ad-tracking company AdImpact.

It is unclear how her shortened campaign schedule dictated how campaign contributions were spent.

Millions more were spent by outside groups and super political-action committees, which were among significant spenders during the Republican primary earlier this year. Those included groups supportive of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential run, which shelled out $154 million before he lost to Trump.

Billionaire Elon Musk, one of the biggest spenders this campaign cycle, poured more than $118 million into a pro-Trump super PAC, which spent heavily on ads backing the former president across swing states as well as for Republican candidates in key congressional races. The group also offered registered voters in Pennsylvania and six other key states a chance to win $1 million by signing a petition pledging support for the rights to free speech and firearms, an effort that came under legal scrutiny.

Future Forward, a super PAC supporting the Democratic presidential ticket, spent more than $500 million, creating dozens of ads that it put through rigorous testing. Only ads that resonated most made the cut. When Biden spent months behind Trump in polls, some Democrats were enraged that the group wasn’t giving him air cover. In the final week of the campaign, the group announced a $100 million ad blitz to help Harris.

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Few expenses were spared by Harris’s campaign to woo voters crucial to her win: Most of the ad money was focused in battleground states, data show. Trump, as of late Wednesday, had won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, according to the Associated Press.

By mid-October, Harris’s campaign still had more than $271 million. It is unclear how that money will be spent. Harris leaves office on Jan. 20, 2025.

The campaign’s spending is the latest example of how money in politics may not be as decisive a factor as it was once considered. Court decisions more than a decade ago eased campaign-finance rules, leaving donors freer to spend on political candidates. But as recently as 2020, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg won only American Samoa in the Democratic primary after his roughly $620 million campaign.

Tarini Parti contributed to this article.

Write to Jack Gillum at jack.gillum@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at anthony.debarros@wsj.com