Money in Politics? Guess Who Gets More of it.

Big MoneyI have written a lot of posts in the past  on the topic of money in politics and why it is not, absent its use as outright bribes, a problem. (Check the list below for some of my posts on this topic.) In short, there is no evidence that the amount of money spent actually changes the outcome of an election and any attempts to limit spending in an election is a restriction on the freedom of speech. Such restrictions also serve to protect incumbents which is undoubtedly why so many politicians support them.

The most vocal opposition to campaign spending largely comes from the Democrat side of the aisle, so I found the following brief article from the Associated Press that appeared in our local paper interesting. Not terribly surprising mind you, but interesting.

When it comes to raising money from the very rich, it’s Democrats who led the way in 2014

Washington(AP) – For as often as Democrats attack the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch for their heavy spending on politics, it’s actually the liberal-minded who shelled out the most cash on the just completed midterm elections.

….

Among the top 100 individual donors to political groups, more than half gave primarily to Democrats or their allies. Among the groups that funneled more than $100,000 to allies, the top of the list is tilted overwhelmingly towards Democrats – a group favoring the GOP doesn’t appear on the list until No. 14.

The two biggest supper PACs of 2014? Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC – both backing Democrats.

In all, the top 10 individual donors to outside groups injected almost $128 million into this year’s elections. Democratic-leaning groups collected $91 million of it.

It is well known that correlation is not the same as causation, so we cannot say that spending more money caused the Democrats to lose heavily, it is certainly the case that if you do not see a correlation there is certainly no causation. This article gives support to my previously stated conclusion that big money has no significant affect on election outcomes. If it did, the Democrats would hardly have suffered as they did in the recent mid-terms.