Campaign Fund-raising, Campaign Funds | featured news

President Barack Obama raised a combined $53 million for his campaign, the Democratic Party and other campaign-related funds in March. He's preparing to face Mitt Romney and a rejuvenated GOP in the general election.

Amid a growing perception that Mitt Romney will be the party’s nominee, the biggest of the Republican “super PACs” is set to begin its first major anti-Obama advertising campaign.

Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee will start raising money together, as President Obama already does with Democrats.

The amount still lags behind what he collected at this point four years ago as he made his first bid for the White House.

President Obama is struggling to draw in big-dollar donations, with half as many people writing large checks to his campaign than at this point four years ago.

President Obama's re-election team is using bad polls to try to raise campaign cash. In a fundraising e-mail sent out last night, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina writes: "If the general election were held today, President Obama would lose to Mitt Romney -- according to the latest poll from Washington Post-ABC News."

Leaders of some of the new groups are taking advantage of the mammoth donations and the lack of oversight to write themselves big paychecks or hire their own companies. The Red White and Blue Fund, a "super PAC" backing the presidential bid of Republican Rick Santorum, paid more than half a million dollars last month to a newly formed direct mail firm.

President Obama's re-election campaign raised $29.1 million in January in conjunction with the campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the campaign announced Friday.

Super PACs, outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited corporate money to help elect or defeat candidates, have spent heavily to influence the presidential race. This chart shows the amounts raised in 2011 by some of the most active candidate-aligned super PACs and the cash they had remaining in the bank at the end of the year.