Election fundraising set to break more records

Fundraising for the 2012 presidential election is on track to break even more records.

Together, campaigns for Mitt Romney and President Obama are likely to have raised $2 billion by the time the votes are counted, reports CBS News. 

The Romney campaign announced Thursday that it had raised a record amount in the first half of October, bringing in $111.8 million dollars in only two weeks. 

The Romney Victory fund, a combination of the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee and four state Republican parties, had amassed a $169 million warchest through October 17, reports NBC News. 

Much of that cash will be spent on last-minute advertising and get out the vote efforts. 

"There's no question about it. We're seeing more and more enthusiasm, more and more support," Romney said on Tuesday in Nevada, reported by NBC News.

"We're going to make sure that these campaigns and the message of these debates, rather, these messages, keep going across the country."

Romney's solid performance in the debates, despite losing two of them, helped him crank up the fundraising to outpace the president. 

The Obama campaign raised $11 million more than Romney during September but now trails the challenger. 

The president's campaign and affiliated Democratic committees raised $90.5 million in the first 17 days of October, reports the Los Angeles Times. 

With Thursday's figures added up, the Obama campaign and party committees officially crossed the $1 billion fundraising threshold, with a record $1.037 billion, according to FEC data compiled by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute and reported in the LA Times.

Romney is catching up quickly, with a total haul of $950.7 million.

According to CBS, both of the 2008 together raised more than $1.8 billion in inflation-adjusted figures.

Radio station KRMC put the staggering amount of cash into perspective – "if you earn $50,000 a year, it will take you 20,000 years to make a billion dollars."