The logic of the 1% ...return on investment.

I know that nobody wants to hear anything more about the election...but too bad because last week's lecture got me thinking about the logic of campaign contributions. I can't seem to understand why outside groups keep on spending millions of dollars up to election day trying to sway a more or less determined outcome. As this study points out, half of the (insane amount of) money put into the election yields no utility. This is simply painful in our given economic climate and is seemingly irrational. The National Rifle Association is an example of an interest group that got little return on it's investment on November 6th---it received a .81% return to be exact:

- 0.81% of $10,955,688 spent in the general election and ending in the desired result.- Supported 27 winning candidates ; 0.42% of money went to supporting winning candidates. 

- Opposed 5 losing candidates; 0.39% of money went to opposing losing candidates.

So, the logical question is why in the world do groups keep spending and spending even when the outcome of the election is more or less determined? There is no way that spending millions to the final day of the election makes rational sense, even in a race as tight as the one we just experienced. This relates back to the Mueller readings we did last week, which focused on campaign contributions as the constrained optimization of expected utility of candidate L or R winning or losing. The decision to contribute is affected by the marginal utility of additional consumption expenditures, your difference in utility between the two candidates, and the marginal impact of your contribution. So, my question is why do groups like the NRA keep putting so much money toward their candidates even when the expected marginal impact is decreasing closer to election day and the MU of additional consumption tends to hold relatively steady? The answer that Mueller's work would lead us to is that the driving force is the difference in utility between candidates--this has to remain very large for contributors on the likely losing side to keep funneling in millions of dollars into campaigns in the face of probable defeat, or, less likely, the MU of additional consumption must be very, very low for contributors. Clearly these outside groups and contributors are very invested, very polarized, and very loaded, but sadly for all of us sitting in front of TV sets, it means that the commercials don't stop until the race is called--even if the outcome has been expected for weeks. I know for a fact the NRA could more productive with it's ten million dollars in other ways and get more than a one percent return.