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> which I believe has strong empirical support

What is that strong support? We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose. In the very last election in the US the losing candidate outspent the winning one - if you look at Super-PAC spending (which is the one considered most "dark and dangerous", right?) the losing campaign had gathered 3x from the winning one ($189.4M against $59.3M). Somehow turned out having money is not enough. So I'd like to see what you call "strong empirical support".




"We routinely see very well-moneyed campaigns lose."

We see it every so often, but I really don't think we see it often, and we don't see the very well moneyed campaign lose to a campaign run on a shoestring.


What's "often" however? I think it happens often enough to doubt direct link between dollars and votes, at least absent hard data proving it.


The better moneyed campaign wins over 90% of the time. There is no doubt.


I notice a curious lack of any reference to this claim. While looking for it, I would advise to look for those that make specific distinction between "better moneyed campaigns always win" and "more attractive campaigns attract more money". If you find any good research on casual link between money invested (beyond aforementioned minimum) and 90% guaranteed winning, please do share it. Please note the statement "there is no doubt" does not qualify as good research.


As you noted, it's a complicated relationship [1], consequently the only place we'd be likely to see a reliable result is in aggregate.

Correlation is not causation, but congressional campaigns in 2012 that outspent their opponent won 91% of the time [2].

One of the clearer links is to voter turnout. I've read it takes between $5-20 to reliably motivate a voter to vote. Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win.

As for the 2016 election you note, general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time (itself one of the primary reasons to spend money in the first place!), where Trump's approach held a clear (and cheap) advantage [3].

More broadly speaking, post-Citizens, we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent. It's legally debatable enough that a group can now say, "This is my personal or commercial speech, so I'm not registering with the FEC."

[1] http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/17/how-much-does-campaign-sp...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/04/th...

[3] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump...


> Sans this minimum level of funding, your supporters don't go to the polls, and you don't win.

Ah, of course, you have the minimum funding to get your message out, I do not doubt that for a minute. There's a minimum level beyond which you can not mount a successful campaign. But beyond that level, the link between dollars and votes becomes much less direct and obvious.

> general consensus is that the difference in funding was largely erased by media time

Yeah, of course, Trump used this trick. But the next one might use another trick. The common thread is that there are many ways to conduct the campaign, and dollars alone do not mean victory.

> we're in an era where we actually don't know how much "money with intent of political influence" is being spent.

Not exactly, but organizations with influence on national scale are not exactly invisible, and their ad spending is not secret too. I mean, you can't exactly hide a public electoral ad, right? And knowing how much ads were run (public info) and what is a typical spot price for an ad (public info), and the same for rallies, etc. one can estimate the spending if not entirely accurately, then with enough accuracy to be able to reason about it, I think. Of course, this does not account for things like free airtime given by networks to a popular entertaining personality or other ways to buy exposure for cheap, but this only underlines the point that dollars is not everything.


Granted on your first two comments. But something not guaranteeing success doesn't mean it doesn't make it more likely.

As for advertising dollars, you could absolutely hide a public ad in 2016 by buying through Facebook, not declaring yourself, and targeting a subset of users.

And Citizens even gives you (not great, but some) legal cover if you're caught. "My ad was an artistic work sharing my own viewpoint." Done.

State / city level, but someone else tuned me into this still running, funny-but-not-funny story in Seattle, in which an reporter decided to walk up to Facebook and Google and ask for election transparency documents they were legally obligated to provide under a 1977 city law.

Tl;dr, they didn't keep relevant records, didn't have any idea about the law, and are still scrambling to be compliant.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/12/04/25606100/were-as...


> Tl;dr, they didn't keep relevant records, didn't have any idea about the law, and are still scrambling to be compliant.

I find it fascinating that the implication is the global company has to be aware of and compliant with any city law that any tiny city council (I am not saying Seattle is tiny, but if Seattle can do it, why Rusty Sticks, Flyover State can't?) passed 40 years ago. I seriously wonder how one can do business in such environment? I guess for a Facebook it's just breadcrumbs and they could hire whatever lawyers needed to fend it off and pay whatever fines they might be assigned without even flinching - but imagine you are just a startup and you have to comply with the same web of laws?




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