As an idea is given by a political philosopher named “Cyndi Lauper” that with money it’s easy to make things possible and of course one of its application is the election campaign, an election is game of money. In other words, money determines who’s going to win or lose. Of course, the first thing which strikes in mind is how much money a candidate be able to raise and how this money will be used to win election…. more you spent and more there are chances to win. So, cash affects elections.
The political race of raising and spending money including illegal money/ black cash or untaxed cash is on hype this year too. In fact, money collected through fundraising is reported to be more in motion nowadays as it was collected in midterm elections conducted in 2014 and not only house candidates were interested in raising money, but also candidates from Senate gathered money to win Senate seats. And ironically from another undisclosed source money influx has even raised up to 26% as compared to before.
As a matter of fact, it is assumed that more you spend money, more is the chance of success in your way. But now a day’s political scientist does not have much faith in a direct relation between money raising to fund the campaign and 100% chances to get candidacy at house or Senate. It’s not the case that more you spend more you have chances to win, but sometimes the turnout is lesser then you spend, more are the chances.
The candidate who spends the most money usually wins
In the span of 16 years, i.e., from 2000-2016 it happens once in 2010 when chances of winning the election were less than 90%, i.e., 86% got succeeded after spending a huge amount of dollars.
One can compare election campaign with the dinner party where one gets a lot of stuff on the table, and everyone takes a fair share of food, and you have provided a lot but still in the end, if something gets short-off it would be remembered. The election campaign is also of a kind where one makes a lot of efforts while others share the fruit.
In the election campaign, the most money is consumed on an advertisement on each candidacy level including a seat for the house, senate and of course, for the presidency as claimed by professor Travis Ridout who has expertise in government and public policy studies at Washington State University. According to him, the expenses incurred by senate and house on election ads were counted up to 43% and 33 % of their total budget allocated for campaign respectively in 2012 and 2014. While in case of advertising for president seat estimates are more than 70% of the budget allocated for the campaign. So that means a big chunk goes on the advertisement.
Advertising — even negative advertising — isn’t very effective
The thing to focus here is an actual perception created for the advertisement and as people consider it. It is a strong tool, but in actual, its real effect is something ambiguous and not clear as mentioned by Ridoust. The reason, of course, is a lot of media sources and fragmentation including the target audience and those who see it. Everyone has a different perspective with which he sees the ads.
As sources of media are quite diversified and much in numbers, the Advertisement has been taken as a tool to make an impression or to reduce the impression of competitors. In this connection, researchers are studying the role of ads since 1990 but still after decade, unable to understand the dynamics of advertisement.
As sometimes too much spending on ads don’t bring the fruits like in case of Texas Governor re-election in 2006. He was advised by the researchers to spend a handsome amount of money to attract voter through his promotional ads and due to his high-level election campaign through ads, he was able to catch the attention, but soon the ads lost its impact there were no more voters.
In a nutshell, spending money on the election necessarily don’t bring the direct result sometimes. But it is a fact that money affects elections in one way or another way.
