The Federal Election Commission requires presidential campaigns to file monthly and quarterly fundraising reports. Those reports are public information. Campaigns are typically able to file full reports within hours to a few days of the end of a given quarter; we have just passed the end of the April-June quarter for 2012 and of course, the end of the month of June.
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee have already filed their June report, showing $100 million raised in one month. The Obama campaign has yet to release its fundraising total either for the quarter or for the month of June. The Obama campaign has been busy, though, fundraising off the heatwave and off its own prediction that Romney’s campaign will outraise theirs.
The deadline to file monthly reports falls on the 20th of each following month, so the June reports must be filed with the FEC by July 20. Filing reports usually get a tactical handling: Healthy campaigns confident that they’re winning the money race will usually file early and release their numbers to show dominance. A campaign struggling to raise money will typically wait to file its report as close to the deadline as possible, both to delay bad news and to get past the week or so when the most attention is paid to fundraising numbers. We’re at July 6 today, two weeks to go, and we have Romney’s numbers but not Obama’s. In May, Romney outraised Obama by $78 million to $60 million. Now Romney has raised $100 million in June. Every July day that passes without a report hints that the Obama campaign’s fundraising is off by a few dollars more than they want to acknowledge.
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