WASHINGTON - United States President Joe Biden’s re-election team is outspending his Republican rivals on advertising with a multimillion-dollar campaign a year before the 2024 election, highlighting the President’s challenges with voters.

At 80, Mr Biden is the oldest-ever US president, and polls show Americans harbour serious doubts about his fitness to serve another four years. Despite signing several Bills into law funding infrastructure, semiconductor innovation and renewable energy production, most people do not know about Mr Biden’s achievements and many worry about the US economy.

Those problems help explain why Mr Biden is flooding the airwaves sooner than two recent predecessors running for re-election, Donald Trump and Mr Barack Obama. 

Mr Biden, the Democratic National Committee and an allied super political action committee (PAC) have spent US$39 million (S$53 million) on advertising as at Nov 2, according to data from AdImpact, a firm tracking ad spending in elections. That is more than the US$31 million Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, and his associated super PAC have spent. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ team has shelled out the most, US$36 million, of all the GOP primary candidates.

Mr Biden’s latest round of advertising spots, which began airing in August, appear to address his perceived weaknesses. One shows Mr Biden donning his signature aviator sunglasses, striding through wartime Kyiv, painting a strong image of the President that contrasts with critics’ claims he is too feeble for the job. Another ad highlights the ways Mr Biden has worked to lower prescription drug and healthcare costs, provisions of the sprawling Inflation Reduction Act he signed in 2022.

Another data point behind the large advertising spending: the President’s popularity. Mr Biden has an approval rating around 39 per cent, below where both Trump and Mr Obama were at this point in the re-election cycle, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker.

Despite his low polling numbers, Mr Biden was buoyed by state-level elections on Tuesday night that saw Democrats win both chambers in Virginia’s legislature and the Kentucky governor’s race, and Ohio voters back a measure protecting abortion rights.

Mr Biden’s campaign is buying time in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.

The ads are not designed to immediately turn around Mr Biden’s poor approval ratings, according to a senior campaign adviser. Instead, they are meant to foreshadow a more aggressive communications plan closer to the election that is expected to total nearly US$1 billion, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss strategy. 

Republicans say the heavy investment from Mr Biden’s political operation this early in the campaign is a sign they are worried about how close the race is.

“Democrats know Biden is weak, so they are investing early in an attempt to save him,” Ms Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump’s allied super PAC, Make America Great Again, said in a statement. 

By comparison, Trump and his allied groups spent US$27 million on ads through this point in the 2020 election, according to AdImpact. Their data does not date back to Mr Obama’s re-election, but Federal Election Commission records show his political operation spent roughly US$14 million over the same period in 2011 on television, cable, radio and online advertising.

While Mr Biden’s campaign is still taking shape, the deep investment in advertising reflects the size of its war chest. Mr Biden’s campaign outraised all other candidates, including Trump, bringing in US$71.3 million in the third quarter. The Biden campaign said in early November it had US$91 million cash on hand. That puts Mr Biden at a distinct advantage to Trump, who reported having nearly US$37.5 million on hand at the end of September.

The pro-Biden advertising campaigns have centred around swing states and metropolitan regions with large communities of Hispanic and Black voters, groups that helped hand Mr Biden the presidency, but among whom he is currently struggling. 

“Building on the strength of the 2020 Biden-Harris coalition and the gains made among targeted voters in 2022 will be crucial to our victory in November 2024,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo released on Nov 2.

Ads featuring Mr Biden have tested well with voters, as do testimonials from people who have benefited from his policies, said the campaign adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The biggest portion of the ad budget is being spent on airing the commercial highlighting prescription drug costs.

The numbers from Mr Biden and his Republican challengers also reveal a broader propensity to spend on advertising in 2023. 

Presidential campaigns, super PACs and parties have collectively spent US$207 million in ad buys so far, compared with US$146 million at this point in the 2020 cycle. Spending on all political advertising is estimated to reach a record US$10.2 billion this cycle, according to AdImpact projections. BLOOMBERG