Biden has big cash advantage over Trump in race's final stretch

By Jason Lange and Grant Smith

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign entered the final stretch of the race with a large cash advantage over President Donald Trump, disclosures filed with the Federal Election Commission showed on Tuesday.

The former vice president's campaign outraised and outspent Trump's re-election effort in September, with Biden's political ads now much more prevalent on American television.

Biden's upper hand in the money race is no guarantee of victory. Trump triumphed in the 2016 election despite being outspent by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Reuters/Ipsos polling shows that in the battleground states likely to decide the winner of the Nov. 3 election, the race is closer than in national polls, which put Biden well ahead of the president.

At the end of September, Biden's campaign had about $177 million in cash, nearly triple the $63 million held by the Trump campaign.

Biden's campaign took in $281 million during the month, more than three times as much as the $81 million Trump's campaign raised, the disclosures show.

It spent more than double what Trump's campaign did.

The Trump campaign spent less than $56 million on television and radio advertising in September, compared with nearly $148 million by Biden, according to Advertising Analytics LLC, a market research company.

This month, Biden's campaign said that together with the Democratic Party, it had $432 million in the bank. Trump and his Republican Party had $251 million in the bank, his campaign said.

(Reporting by Jason Lange and Grant Smith; Editing by Sandra Maler, Peter Cooney and Gerry Doyle)