In this day and age, it shouldn’t be news that money plays a big role in American politics. But after the Supreme Court’s recent controversial decision to remove donor limits in campaigns, we can’t help but wonder just how big of an influence money has on who gets elected to public office. And, as it turns out, all the statistics prove that money means everything when it comes to winning a political election.
According to a study of 467 congressional races in 2012 conducted by the nonprofit United Republic, the candidate with more money won the race 91 percent of the time. For individuals running for office, that means out-raising your opponent increases your chances of winning the election nine-fold.
It’s not just having more money that wins elections, though, but having a lot of it: According to the study, winning political candidates on average spent $23 million on their road to victory. In comparison ,losing candidates spent only $1.1 million.
Designer Jasper McChesney, who works with United Republic, created the below infographic illustrating these findings.
Of course, simply having a fat wallet does not a political winner make. Mitt Romney, for all intents and purposes, had a seemingly unlimited amount of personal wealth at his disposal for his 2012 presidential bid, and yet he wasn’t even close to winning that race.
Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post speculates that these numbers are skewed based on the fact that incumbents are always more likely to win elections and tend to have more money simply by being in the game longer and having deeper donor bases. He also argues that well-liked politicians who deserve to win the election have more money as a result, since people donate to politicians they like and think can win to begin with.
I agree with both of Lowery’s points, however I don’t think that these statistics about money influencing elections are as benign as he makes them out to be. For starters, the correlation between the amount of money a candidate needs to be viable and how much money the winners of elections need means that wealthy individuals can make their mark on elections without necessarily having the required experience or even popular support you would want your representative to have. It also effectively bars average individuals with smaller social networks and personal wealth from embarking on an effective bid for political office.
With policy experts on both sides of the aisle still reeling from the Supreme Court’s decision on the McCucheon case, now is as good a time as ever to look critically as the role of money in our political system and ask ourselves, is this really what’s best for our country?
