"In the latest sign of this year's record-breaking election season, an independent research group estimated Wednesday that candidates, parties and outside interest groups together could spend up to $4 billion on the campaign."
This trend in spending highlights the formula that votes for a candidate are a function of the spending of that candidate, the spending of their opponent, and their respective stances on different policy issues. It would appear that candidates are not taking the risk of the letting their policy positions solely secure their votes and instead are relying on spending in an attempt to buy more votes. Does this mean that voter's stances on the issues are so undecided this election cycle that it is up to campaign spending to sway their votes?
Republican leaning political groups, special interests, and corporations have given so much money that Republican candidates have outspent Democrats 2 to 1 on advertising. Is the Republican lead in the polls a result of this spending? Or are Republican positions on issues doing a better job of swaying voters? It's clear that both political positions and campaign spending are influencing voters, so in the meantime look for candidates to continue to make it rain cash.
1 comment:
When I read the article, I felt bothered for the following reason.
If we assume the following:
1)The number of votes received by a candidate is a function of the spending of that candidate, the spending of their opponent, and their respective (alleged) stances on different policy issues
2) That it is very hard and costly to ascertain the true stances of the candidates (that avoid informative campaigning and solely rely on persuasive campaigning)
3) That candidates can very quickly and easily adjust their stance (in trying to maximize the votes received)
In addition to these 3 assumptions, knowing that interest groups can now donate “unlimited amounts of resources” (because of the supreme court ruling) then political position required to convince the median voter could be viewed as a random variable given the three assumption herein, and because of this randomness it won’t receive as much attention as It used to, if any.
In my opinion it isn’t only that voter’s are undecided and also “rationally ignorant”, but their opinions basically don’t influence the process any more. Their opinions are out there, but the true opinions of the politicians are never clear so people will vote on whoever persuades them with the fancy ads and overwhelming political campaigns that never truly tell you what policies the politician will support.
The political process will simply come down to a race for money. What consequences can that have on the trust of the American people in a government that au fond, buys its way into office? At what point would the legitimacy of the process be questioned?
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