Biden campaign breaks record on television spending

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins The Final Round to discuss what it means for the election the Biden campaign broke records of the most television and digital advertising spending.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Rick, speaking of those states, a lot of those swing states, we've seen a huge push there from both candidates, but particularly Joe Biden. When you take a look at the numbers, Biden breaking the all-time TV spending record, spending more money than-- on television and also on digital advertising than any presidential candidate ever. We still have just over a week to go before Election Day. But, of course, my question, though, to you is, how big of an advantage do you think this gives Biden? Because we've been talking about the cash crunch that the Trump campaign has been facing now for quite some time.

RICK NEWMAN: This is a meaningful advantage for Biden, and it's al-- it's also hard to believe, because Trump was a fundraising juggernaut, you know, up until about three months ago and especially when Biden was battling against 20-or-something other candidates in the primaries. And he ended the pr-- he ended the primary process with essentially no money in his campaign.

So, you know, there's this talk about an enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden because Trump is able to muster, you know, thousands of people at rallies, and Biden doesn't even try to do that. And Trump has boat rallies and motorcycle rallies, and nobody would do that for Biden. However, these fundraising numbers tell you there is a lot of enthusiasm on the Biden side. They're just expressing it differently.

They're expressing it by sending in money. And if I were a candidate and I had to choose between a rally with 10,000 people or an extra $10 million, I think I'd take the $10 million. What that money is real-- is-- is helpful for-- at the very end of a campaign, it's not so much persuading people who they're going to vote for, but it's encouraging people to get out and vote. It's-- It's getting those people you need, those voting blocs who you might need.

But where turnout really matters to get those people to go out and vote, a lot of it is advertising. Some of it is phone calls. Some of it-- not-- not too much of it these days-- on the Biden side, anyways-- is going to be in person. But anything a campaign can do in the last few days to get people to vote is huge. And we know this could come down to a few thousand votes in a couple of counties, so that is a meaningful advantage for Biden.

SEANA SMITH: It certainly is. And we are just over a week away from November 3.