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This statistic shows the amount of funding raised by candidates for their U.S. presidential election campaigns as of June 22, 2016. Hillary Clinton's campaign raised the most, raising a total of *** million U.S. dollars.

U.S. 2016 Elections: campaign financing - additional information

Becoming president of the United States has increasingly become not only a question of a candidate’s politics, experience and mass appeal, but also a question of how much money they can attract in support of their campaign. The money raised by each campaign is mostly used to create and broadcast ads for the candidate themselves, but also against their main competitors. According to forecasts, some *** billion dollars will be spent during the 2016 presidential election season in the United States on broadcast TV ads alone, with additional sums reserved for other media. In fact, digital political advertising spending in the United States is expected to grow to over * trillion U.S. dollars by 2020.

There are a number of different ways in which candidates, campaigns or even parties can acquire funds to support their candidacy, including public funding, such as primary matching funds, national nomination convention support for the major parties and the nominees' general election campaigns of major parties. These public funds are however limited and optional. As such, President Barack Obama was the first major candidate to refuse them, in 2008 and in 2012, since the launch of the program in 1976.

Another, more profitable way, of acquiring funds in support of a candidate is through donations from individuals, groups or organizations. However, there are many laws in place limiting the amount of money a candidate, a campaign or a party can receive, with unions and corporations even being prohibited from donating money directly to a candidate or a national party. As a result, third-party persons or organizations that are not associated with the campaign directly can raise funds to be used to support and even to oppose other candidates, as well as legislation or ballot initiatives. One such type of organization is a political action committee (PAC), further divided into Connected PACs, Nonconnected PACs and Leadership PACs. By far the most controversial type of PAC is the super PAC, which has no limit to the amount of money it can raise. As of ***, Jeb Bush was the presidential candidate with most support from PACs and super PACs, with over *** million U.S. dollars being contributed to his campaign from such committees. Furthermore, some ** thousand PAC-funded television ads in support of his candidacy had already aired by February 1, 2016.