Former (failed) candidate here, state legislative race in a smaller state that's not generally described as competitive. Money = time. When large donors can deploy large amounts of cash, it relieves you of the need to spend tons of time raising money and you can instead spend that time on other things of greater ROI or that can scale your outreach to a larger audience.
There are some efforts to do exactly that, though overall I'd observe that the general level of technological sophistication / early adopter-ism is pretty low in the politician cohort. There are tools for developing campaign plans, direct mail messaging, text campaign content, etc.; we used AI social media ad generation tools to help fill our content pipeline. We developed some internal tools to assist with direct mail fundraising letters to PACs / labor unions / etc.
Not exactly what I was joking about, but interesting nonetheless.
I suppose some amount of adoption by politicians and staffers is good, so that they can see what this new thing is, and crucially, what it is not. But of course it comes at the cost of making a new class of errors. Hopefully these will be contained enough to mainly just serve as a learning experience for them.
Notable that 'Leading the Future' explicitly models itself on Fairshake, which spent $130 million in 2024 and achieved 48 of 51 endorsed candidates winning. At that success rate, $100 million in AI PAC spending could determine 30-40 House seats' positions on AI regulation. For context, the EU's AI Act passed with zero industry PAC spending, while China's AI regulations proceeded without Western-style lobbying.
“ Fairshake supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.
Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework is vital if the broader open blockchain economy is to grow to its full potential here in the United States.
Fairshake is a federal independent expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and supports candidates solely through its independent activities.”
From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. I haven't looked at the fairshake data in-depth but I'd guess they just invested in candidates likely to win who aren't vocally opposed to their position.
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.
A large number of elections for the House of Representatives aren't competitive. The candidate from the incumbent party is going to win no matter how bad they are and no matter how good the other candidates are. No amount of money spent on that election will change things.
However, in a large number of those districts only a small fraction of the voters from that party vote in the primaries or attend the caucuses where that party chooses its candidate. There usually isn't a lot of spending on this. A well funded primary challenger has a very good chance of knocking the incumbent out in the primary or at the caucus.
The threat of this is how Trump keeps the Republicans in the House almost completely under his control. Look at all those Republicans in the House who voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill" and then went home to get completely excoriated by their constituents at town halls for not holding out to get the parts of the bill that were terrible for those constituents removed.
They knew that would be the reaction. But Trump told them that if they didn't vote for it or delayed it to make more changes he'd fund a primary challenger.
It's my understanding that one of the most methodologically rigorous papers is Gilens and Page (2014) [0], which analyzed 1,779 policies over 20 years and found that when rich and average Americans disagree, the rich win 90% of the time, regardless of how many regular citizens support or oppose the policy.
“At that rate” - your math only makes sense if their spending is the entire reason those campaigns won. I haven’t dug into the numbers, but if those are house and senate campaigns then it’s a small fraction of total spending.
Who is going to spend a dime in lobbying for or against the EU’s AI Act? The absolutely irrelevant Mistral, which is starved for money and would rather stay on the good side of the European commissioners and oligarchs?
US politics is broken, but most AI regulations are poorly designed. Look at EU AI policy. It is not addressing any real problems and is mostly just additional paperwork.
Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.
In contested elections both sides usually have a large amount of spending. If you only read the headlines you’d think it was only the winning side that spent any money.
Another thing that isn’t obvious is that PACs have high win rates because they’re usually strategic about which races they go after. The money influence can only move the needle a little bit, so they need to pick races and topics where the voters are already close to evenly split.
There have also been a lot of high profile examples of extreme spending on elections that didn’t lead to the desired outcome.
Right, it’s those with the wealth who are determining policy. Essentially politics is controlled by the upper class, even if they do fight among themselves.
And as soon as some class diving issue comes up where it is the 99.9% against the ultra wealthy it will become a non-partisan issue and get done immediately in favor of the ultra wealthy.
The few case where it doesn't are normally attributable to other problems with the spendy campaign.
In Wisconsin, the conservatives spent enormous sums of money talking about high level worldview issues like DEI and immigration. Which is all well and good if you're in a state where that's relevant maybe? But out here in opioid infested flyover country where people were worried about losing their housing the next week, those worldview kinds of things were just dumb issues to focus so much money on.
So yeah, you can win an election against a big spender. But normally that big spender is actually so dumb and detached from the voters that what's really happening is that they're beating themselves.
I think (hope) there's a limit. And if things get bad enough (sadly) then people will vote for change and their own interests over those of the ownership class. Maybe that's what happened here. But I will also point out that Elon Musk is uniquely detestable.
But in most elections the candidate with the most money wins. [1]
Similarly Mamdani in NYC is facing some truly awful candidates.
Someone also pointed out to me that it's not so much the money on a politician's side that sways them, but the threat of PACs et al spending a ton of money to unseat them if they don't "play ball". [2]
Here's something to ponder. A lot of democracies have preferential voting. You vote in order of candidates and then counting votes is done in rounds where the lowest voted candidate is eliminated and those votes go to the next preference. This works well in avoiding a 2 party system since you can vote for third parties but still have your vote counted no matter which way the count lands in the end (eg. if it does come down to the 2 largest parties you haven't wasted a vote on a third party).
When there's no preferential voting system and therefore only two real parties in the political race it's easier to ensure you get the outcome you want either way. PACs don't really need to influence the election directly as much as ensure they have influence on politicians in the only two parties that have any power.
This. The next time you hear about how some wealthy person gave money to a controversial candidate, check their sources. There is a high probability that they gave money to both leading candidates. Sometimes they will give more money to their preferred candidate but they want to be sure their interests are protected no matter the outcome.
The absolute numbers are still astonishing and make it clear that without deep pockets you won’t get anywhere. Maybe you can make an argument that from a certain level on, money doesn’t help anymore. But the minimum amount is still very high.
Advertising is very expensive and political candidates have to pay retail rates. As the old adage goes, half of it is wasted but you don't know which half. However with political ads, all of the money spent on the losing candidate is wasted in a certain sense.
As media has fragmented, you really have to spend a lot to get in front of enough high propensity voters, and even more to turn out low propensity voters unless you're organically good at getting invited on to podcasts.
Consulting around elections is a huge business, and consultants that win races cost millions, but that can't be paid for by PACs at all because they work with the campaign directly.
Buy ad buyers and media agencies that only work in politics are definitely a thing[1] also.
IMHO, this is the problem with trying to regulate elections in the US. Elections have always been intended to be controlled by the wealthy. This is nothing new. So, in the unlikely event that Congress does add regulations that neuter Super-PACs, and the less-likely event that the Courts uphold the regulations, well, they'll just come up with a new way to fund the desired outcome. They'll call it Super-Duper-PACs or Turbo-PACs or some shit like that.
That's across all elections and issues, not just the presidential campaigns. About 30% of the top ten conservative PACs listed are for single senators or DeSantis. Lumpin them all together as Pro-Trump is just as dishonest as ignoring PACs.
> Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.
Massive amounts of money is a requirement in the US. Of course strategy still plays a role but if you do not have massive amounts of money in the first place, you don't matter.
Because you have to raise massive amounts of money, you need to prioritize big spenders, and thus you have to be responsive to the demands of those large donors.
For example Miriam Adelson who gave Trump 1/5 of his total haul, reportedly conditioned her $100M on allowing Israel to annex the West Bank:
Combine a very-high necessary floor of funding for a wasteful Red Queen's Race opened up by Citizens United, and a bad system of elections that guarantees only two stably-viable parties, and you've got a system where money may not determine the winner, but it very much determines who even makes it on the ballot and the positions they are allowed to take on various issues, in a big way.
As a Canadian I don't understand why people think Canada is different. We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made. But look at the concentration of wealth in the Weston family, the McCains, Rogers or the Thomsons.
These folks have tremendous political influence which they are using to roll up Canada's economy and squeeze every cent out of the working class.
> We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made
There's plenty to be made - it's just very under the radar.
Anecdotally, extended family of mine run a fairly decent sized construction contracting company out in BC (Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland), and have been having family members and family friends donate as a group for both Conservative and NDP MLAs for over a decade now, as well as helping organize voter drives and non-partisan activities at Gurdwaras (if partisan activities came up, they tended to be in Punjabi and thus not reported on - but tbf, in depth local news is dead in much of Canada as well outside of metros).
Lobbying is common across democracies, but how it manifests is different. I feel that there is also a level of visibility into the American system that really highlights bad actors, but similar scrutiny isn't as common in other countries other than maybe the UK.
Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars.
> Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars
It is quite different. Here is how campaign finance works:
There are plenty of examples where the candidate which spent the most lost. Or didn't even get to the election: Bloomberg is a good example.
I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5. If anything, "free" advertising like going on a podcast or working at McDonalds as a stunt seems to have more influence.
> I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5.
This is true of elections in two party systems. Most people have parties they align with and don't switch often. But there are persuadables.
The billions spent on political ads was spent for a reason. Similar to why billions are spent on marketing in general. There is the old adage that sure half of the marketing budget is wasted, but it is never clear which half ahead of time.
There's also the fact that it's something of an arms race, where not spending the billions is not really an option for serious candidates, whether it is "worth it" or not. It's not exactly something that can be tested scientifically, unless a serious candidate wants his campaign to be an experiment.
Get Out the Vote is where it's at. "True swing" (not self-reported swing, most people lie because they think being a swing voter is more socially desirable, I suppose) is indeed a tiny sliver.
It's about convincing your people they need to show up or the other side will make your grandkids shit in litter boxes, or whatever lies it takes.
Just watched a Benn Jordan video on creepy AI, particularly Flock Safety. No suprise that the some of the same people involved in this article are involved in the data brokerage company (which seems awfully dystopian). They've bumped in hundreds of millions in lobbying.
I don't think that is the same thing at all. Laurentian elite just refers to Canada's largest population cluster as a whole and saying that the upper class in general is influential, sure. But it is far from saying that a small number of billionaires are absolute key in the Canadian elections.
Money is a factor, but not the only factor. Trump also had a gigantic Russian propaganda campaign on his side. And the Russians are good at that kind of operation. So Trump also had Russian money on his side, just not in the form of cash.
For the record: I don't think there was significantly more "election meddling" by the Russians in favor of Trump than what you would typically see, even though he is the preferrable candidate to them by quite a bit.
But James Clapper is literally the worst person to quote in your favor, that man is literally on record for lying to congress under oat.
The actual evidence is that Obama's own director of national intelligence never saw anything convincing according to sworn testimony in 2017. Period.
Edit: Also, what report? The Durham Report, in 2023, was anything but a proof. Wikipedia: "On May 15, 2023, Durham's final 306-page unclassified report was publicly released. Durham said there was inadequate predication to open a full investigation and that only an assessment or preliminary investigation should have been launched. The report concluded the FBI had shown confirmation bias and a 'lack of analytical rigor' toward the information they received, especially information the FBI received from politically affiliated persons and entities. The report extensively discusses 'Clinton Plan intelligence' stolen from Russian intelligence that alleged the Clinton campaign was involved in a plot against Trump, though Durham acknowledged it might be fabricated. Durham recommended that the FBI create 'a position for an FBI agent or lawyer to provide oversight of politically sensitive investigations.'"
Even the Associated Press admits: "The findings aren’t flattering for the FBI, with Durham asserting that it rushed into the investigation without an adequate basis and routinely ignored or rationalized evidence that undercut its premise."
Edit 2: Nonsense, Durham is arguing that while Trump's claims of a "deep state" plot are false, the initial investigation absolutely was badly handled with the FBI committing egregious errors of judgement, regardless of any provable political motivation.
Edit 3: Durham, a "trump lackey"? Who was in charge while he was writing this report? Keep in mind he was submitting this report to his boss, Merrick Garland for the Biden DOJ. You can't be serious.
No, the actual evidence would be the investigation and report that says the opposite of what you're claiming. A baseless "this random person said it didn't happen!" claim isn't evidence.
Edit: what exactly do you think you just linked in your edit? That's an investigation by a Trump lackey into the origins of the investigations of Russian interference. You just provided proof that the initial investigation was not politically motivated and is credible. You're welcome to analyze the actual reports and evidence instead of clinging to the word of someone appointed by a convicted felon and fraudster in an attempt to prove they didn't cheat.
The Russians can work to swing an election with having to collude with the Trump campaign. They can just to their propaganda without saying anything to anybody.
Notably, this was basically never true of the modern, post-Nixon and post-authoritarian-christian-courting Republican voters.
They (and a lot of democratic voters!) were always skeptical of things like very-liberal trade policy. The gap between that long-running strain in the voters, and what the bipartisan neoliberal consensus on trade (and immigration, for all Republican politicians complained about it when campaigning) had looked like among nearly all Federal elected officials from the early '80s on, is exactly the kind of thing that Trump exploited to swiftly take over the entire party.
Agree. That's why no Canadian ever wants to come to US work, shopping or medical treatments. Commercialization of all aspects of life is horrible in USA.
This take is not based in reality. Despite issues with the US, net migration data shows that the US has been brain-draining Canada for most of the last 50 years.
as a person who grew up in an american border town, i'm thinking the person you're responding to is being sarcastic. there were always a lot of canadian license plates on the roads and in parking lots where i grew up.
What does "surprisingly little" mean to you? US election spending in 2024 was almost $2bn (mostly presidential election).
If media presence had surprisingly little effect on outcomes, then I would expect candidates to spend surprisingly little or be constantly outperformed by "underfunded" candidates-- neither of which is the case.
It's a game theory problem. There are lots of studies around executive performance, and what people find is that the specific executive/CEO has basically no impact, while things like general industry growth and direction is what matters (suggesting executive/CEO decisions are just a game of chance). But obviously I could also choose a bad executive who would tank the company. What's really happening is when everyone is trying their hardest, all of the executives are as good as they can be, and the things they do tend to look more like luck than performance.
It's the same thing in elections. Because everyone is competitive, who donates what money or it's amount tends to not really matter. If a candidate were to sabotage their campaign they would lose, but in a competitive election it doesn't end up being statistically significant.
The old "half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I have no idea which half" quote springs to mind...
Not sure how you're defining "underfunded" candidates, but the incumbents in competitive races where enormous amounts are spent by both sides to try to gain an advantage don't win anywhere near as often as the incumbent in nom-competitive races which parties and PACs barely bother spending in. Ultimately the spending is positional and cancels out, and the biggest spender often loses because there's not nearly enough difference between the candidates' spending levels to affect whether voters hear their messages.
This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial. We're talking about the lead office in the world's most dominant country, and the amount spent on the election is roughly equivalent to...the amount spent on ice cream or manga/comic books, per year.
There is a lot of money in America, and comparatively not that much is actually spent on the election. Maybe it's still too much in an ostensibly democratic system, but it's worth noting.
> This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial.
It's not really helpful that the number is tolerable in terms of national GDP: election spending being so large in terms of median wealth simply excludes lots of capable potential candidates that are not well positioned to raise money (for whatever reason).
It also leads to completely outsized pandering to "rich donor" interests, because those finance the largest share of the campaigns, which is an obvious problem if you want to call yourself "democracy" (instead of oligarchy or plutocracy).
Yes, I didn’t say it was a good thing, I said it’s actually surprising that comparatively little money is spent on influencing the election. More money is spent on buying ice cream in a single year than on a once-every-four-years election.
How do you stop people from running 3rd party ads in the US while not violating the 1sr amendment? You get into dicey territory quickly. The old overturned election laws were used in many cases to prevent books from being published in election years.
I assume the poster is referencing Citizens United v. FEC, specifically about the government's use of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to restrict showing of political documentaries (apparently, called "Hillary: The Movie" and "Celsius 41.11").
While (as far as I know) the law was never actually used to ban books (only documentaries), the case became infamous because the government argued that it had the right to ban books if it wanted to. See, e.g., the NYTimes article below: "The [government's] lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress has the power to ban political books, signs and Internet videos, if they are paid for by corporations and distributed not long before an election.".
Yeah I made a mistake. There were a couple of films the FEC went after and they claimed the power extended to books as you pointed out. I was under-caffienated.
No, because then the race wouldn't be competitive. It's a game theory problem, and it only holds true when both sides try their best. It's just that when both sides are trying their best, money doesn't seem to have a significant impact. It's why presidential races are often won by the candidate with less money (sometimes significantly less, like half the funding)
elon poured a ton of money into strategic locations right at the end, such as running a fake lottery in PA. many attribute the outcome on the role he played.
may not be the most money, but it's the most effective use of money.
PA roads were littered with trump signs because of people being paid to litter our streets with them. for months.
people are, sadly, very easily influenced. companies wouldn't pour so much into advertising, in general, if it didn't have such an effective influence
Kamala raised $1.65 billion compared to Trump's $1.1 billion [0]. Not like it was a massive difference. Especially because that does not take into account super pacs, like Musks $200million in Pennsylvania.
Probably what the money was spent on should be taken into account too.
Most campaigns stretch the truth a bit here and there, but from what I personally saw and from what I read from other states where the campaigning was more intense generally the Harris campaign did not stretch nearly as far as the Trump campaign.
I'd expect that this let the Tump campaign get more out of a given amount of spending than the Harris campaign could.
The election where the billionaire prominently campaigned for by the richest megabillionaire in the world won proves that money plays little role in politics.
Maybe, but Trump spent over half a billion on his 2024 campaign. Are you suggesting the outcome would have been unchanged had he spent a "sane" amount like $50M total? Because I don't think so.
Furthermore, in a country with somewhat free media you would always expect populist candidates to outperform with a given budget, because their platform is much better aligned with media interest; mass media does not want boring budget plans or quaint reforms-- rage-bait sells way better and nets populists tons of "free" online presence.
Nobody is asking for special privileges. Instead, this is mostly to stop gatekeeper old school businesses from weaponizing the law against much better competitors that are powered via AI. It is to simply make sure everyone is allowed to compete to provide a better/cheaper product.
AI would never be able to hijack the political process. AI Super-PACs dominating elections would be a clear milestone in the progression of the "gradual disempowerment" theory of loss of human control.
How could a person dedicated to their denial of the possibility of gradual disempowerment spin this as "good actually?" Am I reduced to "technological improvement is always good"? Or there some logically smaller step I can take?
Former (failed) candidate here, state legislative race in a smaller state that's not generally described as competitive. Money = time. When large donors can deploy large amounts of cash, it relieves you of the need to spend tons of time raising money and you can instead spend that time on other things of greater ROI or that can scale your outreach to a larger audience.
I guess that means that now, AI is helping these politicians save time and increase their productivity!
There are some efforts to do exactly that, though overall I'd observe that the general level of technological sophistication / early adopter-ism is pretty low in the politician cohort. There are tools for developing campaign plans, direct mail messaging, text campaign content, etc.; we used AI social media ad generation tools to help fill our content pipeline. We developed some internal tools to assist with direct mail fundraising letters to PACs / labor unions / etc.
Not exactly what I was joking about, but interesting nonetheless.
I suppose some amount of adoption by politicians and staffers is good, so that they can see what this new thing is, and crucially, what it is not. But of course it comes at the cost of making a new class of errors. Hopefully these will be contained enough to mainly just serve as a learning experience for them.
That is awful. Corporate money, billionaires need to stay out of politics.
Yet another reason why Citizens United v FEC was an absolute mistake.
I wouldn't object, though I also don't see how to put the genie back in the Citizens United bottle.
Amend the constitution. All campaigns can only spend so much money. Other countries have done this.
Notable that 'Leading the Future' explicitly models itself on Fairshake, which spent $130 million in 2024 and achieved 48 of 51 endorsed candidates winning. At that success rate, $100 million in AI PAC spending could determine 30-40 House seats' positions on AI regulation. For context, the EU's AI Act passed with zero industry PAC spending, while China's AI regulations proceeded without Western-style lobbying.
“ Fairshake supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.
Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework is vital if the broader open blockchain economy is to grow to its full potential here in the United States.
Fairshake is a federal independent expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and supports candidates solely through its independent activities.”
https://www.fairshakepac.com/
From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. I haven't looked at the fairshake data in-depth but I'd guess they just invested in candidates likely to win who aren't vocally opposed to their position.
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.
Which... does not influence elections?
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.
A large number of elections for the House of Representatives aren't competitive. The candidate from the incumbent party is going to win no matter how bad they are and no matter how good the other candidates are. No amount of money spent on that election will change things.
However, in a large number of those districts only a small fraction of the voters from that party vote in the primaries or attend the caucuses where that party chooses its candidate. There usually isn't a lot of spending on this. A well funded primary challenger has a very good chance of knocking the incumbent out in the primary or at the caucus.
The threat of this is how Trump keeps the Republicans in the House almost completely under his control. Look at all those Republicans in the House who voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill" and then went home to get completely excoriated by their constituents at town halls for not holding out to get the parts of the bill that were terrible for those constituents removed.
They knew that would be the reaction. But Trump told them that if they didn't vote for it or delayed it to make more changes he'd fund a primary challenger.
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It's my understanding that one of the most methodologically rigorous papers is Gilens and Page (2014) [0], which analyzed 1,779 policies over 20 years and found that when rich and average Americans disagree, the rich win 90% of the time, regardless of how many regular citizens support or oppose the policy.
[0] https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_th...
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Wow, seats are cheap! We should totally let the people with the most money buy them, that will bring us stability.
I wonder if we could design a system where everybody in the populace chips in a little bit, and the people buy some representatives of our own.
I have been thinking the same. Use their own tools against them.
Depressingly this is exactly how it went in the 19th century only instead of railway barons we now have tech barons.
“At that rate” - your math only makes sense if their spending is the entire reason those campaigns won. I haven’t dug into the numbers, but if those are house and senate campaigns then it’s a small fraction of total spending.
Who is going to spend a dime in lobbying for or against the EU’s AI Act? The absolutely irrelevant Mistral, which is starved for money and would rather stay on the good side of the European commissioners and oligarchs?
There's simply too much money involved, investors and corporations will do literally everything they can to keep this going...
Just like the events leading to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008
Even as the bubble is bursting, degenerate gamblers will keep trying to pull that lever.
Awesome, we get to see democracy destroyed so the richest people on the planet can keep their Ponzi scheme.
Added bonus is the water and power it sucks up.
This was a very predictable outcome once money was classified as speech.
Rich people have way more of it.
US politics is broken, but most AI regulations are poorly designed. Look at EU AI policy. It is not addressing any real problems and is mostly just additional paperwork.
Silicon Valley is just like the oil and gas industry. This is quite awful.
We need to reverse Citizens United v FEC decision.
The degree to which US politics can be bought amazes me as a Canadian. It does seem that $$$ makes right in the US.
It isn’t so much the will of the people but the will of the rich and powerful.
For example, in the last US election there was billions spent in 2024 by the political parties, and outside groups:
Parties themselves: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
Outside groups: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_group
Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.
In contested elections both sides usually have a large amount of spending. If you only read the headlines you’d think it was only the winning side that spent any money.
Another thing that isn’t obvious is that PACs have high win rates because they’re usually strategic about which races they go after. The money influence can only move the needle a little bit, so they need to pick races and topics where the voters are already close to evenly split.
There have also been a lot of high profile examples of extreme spending on elections that didn’t lead to the desired outcome.
> In contested elections both sides usually have a large amount of spending.
I think you're thinking about this in the wrong way.
What you're saying is that people who don't have a lot of money to spend usually don't make it to the election.
Right, it’s those with the wealth who are determining policy. Essentially politics is controlled by the upper class, even if they do fight among themselves.
And as soon as some class diving issue comes up where it is the 99.9% against the ultra wealthy it will become a non-partisan issue and get done immediately in favor of the ultra wealthy.
This.
Money definitely sways elections.
The few case where it doesn't are normally attributable to other problems with the spendy campaign.
In Wisconsin, the conservatives spent enormous sums of money talking about high level worldview issues like DEI and immigration. Which is all well and good if you're in a state where that's relevant maybe? But out here in opioid infested flyover country where people were worried about losing their housing the next week, those worldview kinds of things were just dumb issues to focus so much money on.
So yeah, you can win an election against a big spender. But normally that big spender is actually so dumb and detached from the voters that what's really happening is that they're beating themselves.
But isn't flyover meth country red anyway?
American politics for all intents and purposes is a very simple game.
I think (hope) there's a limit. And if things get bad enough (sadly) then people will vote for change and their own interests over those of the ownership class. Maybe that's what happened here. But I will also point out that Elon Musk is uniquely detestable. But in most elections the candidate with the most money wins. [1]
Similarly Mamdani in NYC is facing some truly awful candidates.
Someone also pointed out to me that it's not so much the money on a politician's side that sways them, but the threat of PACs et al spending a ton of money to unseat them if they don't "play ball". [2]
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-vs-sp...
Here's something to ponder. A lot of democracies have preferential voting. You vote in order of candidates and then counting votes is done in rounds where the lowest voted candidate is eliminated and those votes go to the next preference. This works well in avoiding a 2 party system since you can vote for third parties but still have your vote counted no matter which way the count lands in the end (eg. if it does come down to the 2 largest parties you haven't wasted a vote on a third party).
When there's no preferential voting system and therefore only two real parties in the political race it's easier to ensure you get the outcome you want either way. PACs don't really need to influence the election directly as much as ensure they have influence on politicians in the only two parties that have any power.
This. The next time you hear about how some wealthy person gave money to a controversial candidate, check their sources. There is a high probability that they gave money to both leading candidates. Sometimes they will give more money to their preferred candidate but they want to be sure their interests are protected no matter the outcome.
We actually se an increasing number of elections where the loser outspends the winner by a large margin.
Case in point: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. Trump's campaign was about $541M cheaper.
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
This has gotten a lot more complex to accurately track since Citizens United.
Campaign spending isn't even close to the actual total spent on a campaign, any more.
The absolute numbers are still astonishing and make it clear that without deep pockets you won’t get anywhere. Maybe you can make an argument that from a certain level on, money doesn’t help anymore. But the minimum amount is still very high.
Advertising is very expensive and political candidates have to pay retail rates. As the old adage goes, half of it is wasted but you don't know which half. However with political ads, all of the money spent on the losing candidate is wasted in a certain sense.
As media has fragmented, you really have to spend a lot to get in front of enough high propensity voters, and even more to turn out low propensity voters unless you're organically good at getting invited on to podcasts.
I wonder how much of the money goes to well connected ad agencies and consultants. I bet a lot. The whole system is corrupt all the way through.
Consulting around elections is a huge business, and consultants that win races cost millions, but that can't be paid for by PACs at all because they work with the campaign directly.
Buy ad buyers and media agencies that only work in politics are definitely a thing[1] also.
[1] https://oaaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20.06.30-Politic... (this is an old list but illustrative)
> Case in point: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. Trump's campaign was about $541M cheaper.
You are skipping Super PACs which is pretty much exclusively ultra rich people political spending.
Here is the Super PAC spending and Kamala was destroyed by pro-Trump spending:
Conservative/Trump: $1,754,585,468
Liberal/Kamala: $786,990,015
https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs
IMHO, this is the problem with trying to regulate elections in the US. Elections have always been intended to be controlled by the wealthy. This is nothing new. So, in the unlikely event that Congress does add regulations that neuter Super-PACs, and the less-likely event that the Courts uphold the regulations, well, they'll just come up with a new way to fund the desired outcome. They'll call it Super-Duper-PACs or Turbo-PACs or some shit like that.
That's across all elections and issues, not just the presidential campaigns. About 30% of the top ten conservative PACs listed are for single senators or DeSantis. Lumpin them all together as Pro-Trump is just as dishonest as ignoring PACs.
> Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.
Massive amounts of money is a requirement in the US. Of course strategy still plays a role but if you do not have massive amounts of money in the first place, you don't matter.
Because you have to raise massive amounts of money, you need to prioritize big spenders, and thus you have to be responsive to the demands of those large donors.
For example Miriam Adelson who gave Trump 1/5 of his total haul, reportedly conditioned her $100M on allowing Israel to annex the West Bank:
https://forward.com/fast-forward/618034/miriam-adelson-fundi...
Combine a very-high necessary floor of funding for a wasteful Red Queen's Race opened up by Citizens United, and a bad system of elections that guarantees only two stably-viable parties, and you've got a system where money may not determine the winner, but it very much determines who even makes it on the ballot and the positions they are allowed to take on various issues, in a big way.
There can be more than two sides in healthy democracies.
Said healthy democracies don’t have first past the post voting systems. Our system pretty much ensures only two viable parties.
As a Canadian I don't understand why people think Canada is different. We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made. But look at the concentration of wealth in the Weston family, the McCains, Rogers or the Thomsons.
These folks have tremendous political influence which they are using to roll up Canada's economy and squeeze every cent out of the working class.
> We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made
There's plenty to be made - it's just very under the radar.
Anecdotally, extended family of mine run a fairly decent sized construction contracting company out in BC (Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland), and have been having family members and family friends donate as a group for both Conservative and NDP MLAs for over a decade now, as well as helping organize voter drives and non-partisan activities at Gurdwaras (if partisan activities came up, they tended to be in Punjabi and thus not reported on - but tbf, in depth local news is dead in much of Canada as well outside of metros).
Lobbying is common across democracies, but how it manifests is different. I feel that there is also a level of visibility into the American system that really highlights bad actors, but similar scrutiny isn't as common in other countries other than maybe the UK.
Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars.
> Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars
It is quite different. Here is how campaign finance works:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...
And this includes all PACs and equivalents. We don't have dark money PACs.
>as a Canadian
Canada arguably has an even more ingrained system of lobbying.
It wasn't always this extreme, but key decisions on what is allowed in the media and where money can come from have turned it into what it is now.
There are plenty of examples where the candidate which spent the most lost. Or didn't even get to the election: Bloomberg is a good example.
I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5. If anything, "free" advertising like going on a podcast or working at McDonalds as a stunt seems to have more influence.
> I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5.
This is true of elections in two party systems. Most people have parties they align with and don't switch often. But there are persuadables.
The billions spent on political ads was spent for a reason. Similar to why billions are spent on marketing in general. There is the old adage that sure half of the marketing budget is wasted, but it is never clear which half ahead of time.
https://www.b2bmarketing.net/half-the-money-i-spend-on-adver...
There's also the fact that it's something of an arms race, where not spending the billions is not really an option for serious candidates, whether it is "worth it" or not. It's not exactly something that can be tested scientifically, unless a serious candidate wants his campaign to be an experiment.
Get Out the Vote is where it's at. "True swing" (not self-reported swing, most people lie because they think being a swing voter is more socially desirable, I suppose) is indeed a tiny sliver.
It's about convincing your people they need to show up or the other side will make your grandkids shit in litter boxes, or whatever lies it takes.
As a Canadian, I cannot stand the “as a Canadian… $something_smug” trend. We look down on the USA and pretend our poop doesn’t stink.
Our political donation system is infinitely better though than the US.
One criticism is that parties can be bought too cheaply in Canada.
Just watched a Benn Jordan video on creepy AI, particularly Flock Safety. No suprise that the some of the same people involved in this article are involved in the data brokerage company (which seems awfully dystopian). They've bumped in hundreds of millions in lobbying.
ever heard of "Laurentian elite" ?
> ever heard of "Laurentian elite" ?
I don't think that is the same thing at all. Laurentian elite just refers to Canada's largest population cluster as a whole and saying that the upper class in general is influential, sure. But it is far from saying that a small number of billionaires are absolute key in the Canadian elections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_elite
Canada has significant limits to political spending and I think that is amazing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...
Not really true, Kamala outspent Trump 2:1 and had the media machinery on her side
> Not really true, Kamala outspent Trump 2:1 and had the media machinery on her side
Only if you exclude outside funding. Conservative SuperPACs were incredibly well funded compared to Liberal ones last election: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs
And they were funded more than the official candidates themselves. Because then these groups can act without limits on their spending.
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The rich don't need the bigger spender to have 100% chance of winning.
It is sufficient that both sides need the big money to even have a shot.
A specific person raising more money is not the same as the wealthy spending money on PACs.
Kamla isn't the only case. You look at history and there are many examples.
Are there? afaik Trump is one of the only exceptions to American presidents that have won elections without raising more money than their competitors.
Money doesn’t sway elections to any real degree, but it does shape legislation. Often for much less than you’d expect.
In the end, legislation is what really matters, right?
Money is a factor, but not the only factor. Trump also had a gigantic Russian propaganda campaign on his side. And the Russians are good at that kind of operation. So Trump also had Russian money on his side, just not in the form of cash.
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For the record: I don't think there was significantly more "election meddling" by the Russians in favor of Trump than what you would typically see, even though he is the preferrable candidate to them by quite a bit.
But James Clapper is literally the worst person to quote in your favor, that man is literally on record for lying to congress under oat.
You should probably take a look at the actual evidence instead.
The actual evidence is that Obama's own director of national intelligence never saw anything convincing according to sworn testimony in 2017. Period.
Edit: Also, what report? The Durham Report, in 2023, was anything but a proof. Wikipedia: "On May 15, 2023, Durham's final 306-page unclassified report was publicly released. Durham said there was inadequate predication to open a full investigation and that only an assessment or preliminary investigation should have been launched. The report concluded the FBI had shown confirmation bias and a 'lack of analytical rigor' toward the information they received, especially information the FBI received from politically affiliated persons and entities. The report extensively discusses 'Clinton Plan intelligence' stolen from Russian intelligence that alleged the Clinton campaign was involved in a plot against Trump, though Durham acknowledged it might be fabricated. Durham recommended that the FBI create 'a position for an FBI agent or lawyer to provide oversight of politically sensitive investigations.'"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_special_counsel_investi...
Even the Associated Press admits: "The findings aren’t flattering for the FBI, with Durham asserting that it rushed into the investigation without an adequate basis and routinely ignored or rationalized evidence that undercut its premise."
https://apnews.com/article/durham-report-fbi-trump-clinton-2...
Edit 2: Nonsense, Durham is arguing that while Trump's claims of a "deep state" plot are false, the initial investigation absolutely was badly handled with the FBI committing egregious errors of judgement, regardless of any provable political motivation.
Edit 3: Durham, a "trump lackey"? Who was in charge while he was writing this report? Keep in mind he was submitting this report to his boss, Merrick Garland for the Biden DOJ. You can't be serious.
No, the actual evidence would be the investigation and report that says the opposite of what you're claiming. A baseless "this random person said it didn't happen!" claim isn't evidence.
Edit: what exactly do you think you just linked in your edit? That's an investigation by a Trump lackey into the origins of the investigations of Russian interference. You just provided proof that the initial investigation was not politically motivated and is credible. You're welcome to analyze the actual reports and evidence instead of clinging to the word of someone appointed by a convicted felon and fraudster in an attempt to prove they didn't cheat.
Not a single one of your quotes disagrees with the assertions in the comment to which you were responding.
It did not assert that the Trump campaign was working with Russia. It asserted that Russia was using its propaganda apparatus to support Trump.
December 2017, James Clapper: "[Putin] knows how to handle an asset, and that’s what he’s doing with Trump."
February 2019, James Clapper who said he agreed “completely” with Mr. McCabe that Mr. Trump could be a Russian asset.
The Russians can work to swing an election with having to collude with the Trump campaign. They can just to their propaganda without saying anything to anybody.
side question: why do you refer to Harris by her first name, but Trump by his last name?
Liberalism is the core of American conservatism. That’s less true elsewhere.
In that light, trump is no conservative at all and still, the GOP backs him. So are the republicans no conservatives either?
I bet a lot of trumps base considers themselfs conservative but look away from basically every inner political move trump made.
This is what confuses me about the "conservative core" your are speaking of. Where is it?
Trump is absolutely conservative.
Hes simply the logical conclusion of 50 years of republicans becoming increasingly extreme.
Notably, this was basically never true of the modern, post-Nixon and post-authoritarian-christian-courting Republican voters.
They (and a lot of democratic voters!) were always skeptical of things like very-liberal trade policy. The gap between that long-running strain in the voters, and what the bipartisan neoliberal consensus on trade (and immigration, for all Republican politicians complained about it when campaigning) had looked like among nearly all Federal elected officials from the early '80s on, is exactly the kind of thing that Trump exploited to swiftly take over the entire party.
Agree. That's why no Canadian ever wants to come to US work, shopping or medical treatments. Commercialization of all aspects of life is horrible in USA.
This take is not based in reality. Despite issues with the US, net migration data shows that the US has been brain-draining Canada for most of the last 50 years.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025007/artic...
as a person who grew up in an american border town, i'm thinking the person you're responding to is being sarcastic. there were always a lot of canadian license plates on the roads and in parking lots where i grew up.
It doesn't, money has surprisingly little effect on competitive elections
What does "surprisingly little" mean to you? US election spending in 2024 was almost $2bn (mostly presidential election).
If media presence had surprisingly little effect on outcomes, then I would expect candidates to spend surprisingly little or be constantly outperformed by "underfunded" candidates-- neither of which is the case.
It's a game theory problem. There are lots of studies around executive performance, and what people find is that the specific executive/CEO has basically no impact, while things like general industry growth and direction is what matters (suggesting executive/CEO decisions are just a game of chance). But obviously I could also choose a bad executive who would tank the company. What's really happening is when everyone is trying their hardest, all of the executives are as good as they can be, and the things they do tend to look more like luck than performance.
It's the same thing in elections. Because everyone is competitive, who donates what money or it's amount tends to not really matter. If a candidate were to sabotage their campaign they would lose, but in a competitive election it doesn't end up being statistically significant.
The old "half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I have no idea which half" quote springs to mind...
Not sure how you're defining "underfunded" candidates, but the incumbents in competitive races where enormous amounts are spent by both sides to try to gain an advantage don't win anywhere near as often as the incumbent in nom-competitive races which parties and PACs barely bother spending in. Ultimately the spending is positional and cancels out, and the biggest spender often loses because there's not nearly enough difference between the candidates' spending levels to affect whether voters hear their messages.
This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial. We're talking about the lead office in the world's most dominant country, and the amount spent on the election is roughly equivalent to...the amount spent on ice cream or manga/comic books, per year.
There is a lot of money in America, and comparatively not that much is actually spent on the election. Maybe it's still too much in an ostensibly democratic system, but it's worth noting.
> This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial.
It's not really helpful that the number is tolerable in terms of national GDP: election spending being so large in terms of median wealth simply excludes lots of capable potential candidates that are not well positioned to raise money (for whatever reason).
It also leads to completely outsized pandering to "rich donor" interests, because those finance the largest share of the campaigns, which is an obvious problem if you want to call yourself "democracy" (instead of oligarchy or plutocracy).
Yes, I didn’t say it was a good thing, I said it’s actually surprising that comparatively little money is spent on influencing the election. More money is spent on buying ice cream in a single year than on a once-every-four-years election.
So then shouldn't be a problem to stop it entirely, right?
How do you stop people from running 3rd party ads in the US while not violating the 1sr amendment? You get into dicey territory quickly. The old overturned election laws were used in many cases to prevent books from being published in election years.
>The old overturned election laws were used in many cases to prevent books from being published in election years.
Which laws and which books? I can't find anything.
I assume the poster is referencing Citizens United v. FEC, specifically about the government's use of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act to restrict showing of political documentaries (apparently, called "Hillary: The Movie" and "Celsius 41.11").
While (as far as I know) the law was never actually used to ban books (only documentaries), the case became infamous because the government argued that it had the right to ban books if it wanted to. See, e.g., the NYTimes article below: "The [government's] lawyer, Malcolm L. Stewart, said Congress has the power to ban political books, signs and Internet videos, if they are paid for by corporations and distributed not long before an election.".
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/washington/25scotus.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-205
Yeah I made a mistake. There were a couple of films the FEC went after and they claimed the power extended to books as you pointed out. I was under-caffienated.
No, because then the race wouldn't be competitive. It's a game theory problem, and it only holds true when both sides try their best. It's just that when both sides are trying their best, money doesn't seem to have a significant impact. It's why presidential races are often won by the candidate with less money (sometimes significantly less, like half the funding)
If money has surprisingly little effect on competitive elections, why do candidates ask for it?
Yeah, cuz no matter who wins can be bought anyway... That's not good either
Do you have a source?
just google kamala harris campaign fundraising vs trump. 2024 election just happened not too long ago. she got more money than trump and yet lose.
money is not the only factor.
elon poured a ton of money into strategic locations right at the end, such as running a fake lottery in PA. many attribute the outcome on the role he played.
may not be the most money, but it's the most effective use of money.
PA roads were littered with trump signs because of people being paid to litter our streets with them. for months.
people are, sadly, very easily influenced. companies wouldn't pour so much into advertising, in general, if it didn't have such an effective influence
Reid Hoffman poured an equal amount of money thru Future Forward PAC on the Harris side.
For fun I did a non-scientific analysis of presidential candidates a while back, and found funding raised wasn't statistically significant https://thomashansen.xyz/blog/election-spending-isnt-statist...
Kamala raised $1.65 billion compared to Trump's $1.1 billion [0]. Not like it was a massive difference. Especially because that does not take into account super pacs, like Musks $200million in Pennsylvania.
[0] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har...
Probably what the money was spent on should be taken into account too.
Most campaigns stretch the truth a bit here and there, but from what I personally saw and from what I read from other states where the campaigning was more intense generally the Harris campaign did not stretch nearly as far as the Trump campaign.
I'd expect that this let the Tump campaign get more out of a given amount of spending than the Harris campaign could.
The election where the billionaire prominently campaigned for by the richest megabillionaire in the world won proves that money plays little role in politics.
Maybe, but Trump spent over half a billion on his 2024 campaign. Are you suggesting the outcome would have been unchanged had he spent a "sane" amount like $50M total? Because I don't think so.
Furthermore, in a country with somewhat free media you would always expect populist candidates to outperform with a given budget, because their platform is much better aligned with media interest; mass media does not want boring budget plans or quaint reforms-- rage-bait sells way better and nets populists tons of "free" online presence.
Yeah but if you ask chatgpt:
"Absolutely, money does have a measurable impact on political outcomes"
https://www.investopedia.com/surprising-thing-billionaires-s...
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-vs-sp...
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Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You may not owe whoever you're talking about any better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
What? lol what part of what I said is wrong dude. It’s the reality
Commenters need to follow the rules here regardless of their views of reality.
Ok bud I’ll sanitize all my hackernews comments to ensure that it fits into the mindset of an automaton.
Nobody is asking for special privileges. Instead, this is mostly to stop gatekeeper old school businesses from weaponizing the law against much better competitors that are powered via AI. It is to simply make sure everyone is allowed to compete to provide a better/cheaper product.
AI would never be able to hijack the political process. AI Super-PACs dominating elections would be a clear milestone in the progression of the "gradual disempowerment" theory of loss of human control.
How could a person dedicated to their denial of the possibility of gradual disempowerment spin this as "good actually?" Am I reduced to "technological improvement is always good"? Or there some logically smaller step I can take?
These are pro-AI PACs, not PACs run by AI.