Money Boom: Record Amounts Plowed into 2016 Election
For the most cynical among us, democracy in the US is just a codified peaceful way of swapping out the figureheads at the top. For the less cynical, there is a lot more at stake, and they’re willing to plow huge amounts of money into these elections so that this money will help them accomplish their goals afterwards.
Putting money to work in politics is easy in the US. It’s considered a legitimate investment with some sort of return. You have to be really careless, totally uninformed, and completely devoid of common sense to commit illegal acts of corruption because there are a million ways to do this legally. And the amounts changing hands are enormous.
Nearly $6.6 billion: that’s how much candidates, parties, and outside groups are raising and spending in trying to move things their way in the 2016 election cycle, the Center for Responsive Politics estimates on its website, OpenSecrets.org. It’s a new record. It’s up by $86.5 million, adjusted for inflation, from the 2012 presidential cycle, which had also been a record.
Alas, it’s not over, and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) hasn’t reported all the data yet, and some money doesn’t get reported at all. We’ll get to that in a moment. Hence the report: ‘The cost could be much higher – this is a conservative estimate.’
This post was published at Wolf Street by Wolf Richter ‘ October 30, 2016.
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