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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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...

But isn't flyover meth country red anyway?

American politics for all intents and purposes is a very simple game.

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

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.

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.

> 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.

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