Washington ? Whatever the reasons John Kerry and the Democrats lost the race for the White House, lack of money wasn’t one.

Tax-exempt pro-Democratic groups raising big checks for this year’s election collected almost twice as much money as their Republican rivals in the presidential race, a study shows. The financial advantage comes in addition to record fund raising by Kerry and the Democratic Party.

In all, the nonparty political groups, known as 527s because of the tax code section that covers them, raised about $534 million and spent roughly $544 million in the 2003-04 election cycle, the analysis by the nonpartisan Political Money Line campaign finance tracking service found.

The prolific fund raising is a sign that such groups, many of which debuted in the 2004 election season, will have no problem surviving the competition for contributions, Kent Cooper, co-founder of Political Money Line, said Sunday. Fund-raising drives over Web sites and through e-mail helped several become political players very quickly, he said.

“I think it shows you that with the Internet, anyway, your lines of communication can be large pipelines for quick money,” Cooper said.