Biden unveils $280 mln campaign advertising blitz
U.S. Democratic candidate Joe Biden's presidential campaign will blanket television and social media with $280 million in advertising by Election Day.
That's more than his rival's campaign has spent in total since 2017.
The Biden campaign on Wednesday unveiled its plans, which include $60 million for digital ads and will exhaust every cent the campaign reported having available to spend last month.
National polls showing Biden ahead of Republican President Donald Trump have given the Democratic campaign new confidence, as did the fact that Biden out-raised Trump for the first time last quarter.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll out Wednesday found that Biden leads Trump by 10 percentage points in support among registered voters, less than 100 days before the presidential election.
A separate Reuters opinion poll found most registered voters - 66 percent - oppose the idea, raised by Trump, of delaying the election.
Asked why they thought the president might want to postpone the contest, 54 percent said they believed he was trying help himself, either because he thought he would have a better chance of winning a later election, or that he wanted to distract the nation from the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis.
About 57% of Americans said they disapproved of the way Trump was dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden will target ads in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Republican-leaning states that the campaign hopes to put in play this fall, such as Arizona and Georgia.
Trump has reserved nearly $150 million in television ads across 11 states so far for the fall. To date, Trump has significantly out-spent Biden on Facebook, Google and on television.
