Election for Sale?

Section 20.3 of Mueller's textbook focuses on the rationale behind campaign contributions and the real impact that they exhibit. With over $2 billion spent on the presidential election alone, the 2012 election season, by far the most expensive in history, presents an interesting case study for this material. Mueller predicts that a rational outside group will only provide campaign contributions to candidates if 1) there is a connection between the amount of money received and the probability of electoral victory and 2) there is a connection between a contributing group's policy agenda and the realized votes of the elected candidate.

What makes the 2012 election particularly interesting is that it was the first election after the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling, which declared that parts of the existing campaign-finance legislation violated the First Amendment and led to the proliferation of the "super PACs" that inundated this election cycle with limitless outside money. This outside money, though no longer routed directly through a campaign, was furnished with the hopes and expectations on the part of the contributors that Mueller analyzes.

So what's the verdict? Did record amounts of money and advertising influence our nation's choice of president? It's hard to say. This New York Times page reports that super PAC spending by Republican groups outstripped that of super PACs with Democratic agendas. But spending directly by the Obama campaign exceeded that of the Romney campaign. And of course looking at the outcome of an election as solely the product of campaign spending leaves out many important explanatory variables.

Having lived through election season in a swing state, one part of section 20.3 that I think we can all attest to is the diminishing returns to this money. By November, I found myself beyond the upper flat part of the S-curve Mueller describes and into a realm where the only influence political advertisements had was to make me consider abstaining. The real victory for Virginians of all political stripes is that we no longer have to experience a barrage of election advertisements through every medium imaginable. Just in time for Christmas shopping ads in November!