If you genuinely couldn't by elections with money, there wouldn't be so much money flowing into politics.
Money alone isn't sufficient to guarantee an election outcome, you still have to execute.
Money alone isn't sufficient to guarantee an election outcome, you still have to execute.
"'American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by Karl Rove, spent $104 million in the general election, but none of its candidates won. The United States Chamber of Commerce spent $24 million backing Republicans in 15 Senate races; only two of them won. Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul, spent $53 million on nine Republican candidates, eight of whom lost.' It was, as the paper noted, 'A Landslide Loss for Big Money.'"[1]
"When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote."[2]
[1] - http://reason.com/archives/2014/07/14/dear-liberals-stop-fre...
[2] - http://freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/does-money-really-buy-ele...
That's not saying every dollar is the same, and the money -> influence function is a straight line. But money buys reach and coverage at the very least.
That's a very important point in public corruption debates, since there mere perception of corruption can diminish trust in public institutions. And trust, as it turns out, is their greatest asset. That's why effective anti-corruption laws are written to prohibit actions that simply appear corrupt, along with those that can be proven corrupt beyond all reasonable doubt.
When it comes to public trust, appearance really does matter.