So after Citizens United, where is all the new money that the left predicted would be entering politics?

[Axulus]

And spending has declined in each of the last two congressional elections. Candidates and other interested parties spent $3.7 billion on this year’s midterms, down from an inflation-adjusted total of $3.8 billion in 2012, which was less than the $4 billion spent in2010, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. (These figures do not include a few hundred million dollars in unreported spending on issue ads.) In fact, spending has dropped as the economy has grown and despite a series of contests in which at least one house of Congress was plausibly at stake. “Dire warnings rang out that the decision would herald a new era in politics,” wrote Adam Bonica, a Stanford University political scientist, in a 2013 paper about the effects of Citizens United. “Three years on, there is little evidence that these predictions have come to pass.” Over the past year, Americans spent more on almonds than on selecting their representatives in Congress.

...

Most campaign money, after all, comes in smaller chunks from individual donors. People who gave $3 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008 could not have reasonably expected that their small contributions would influence the future president. Even those who give larger sums rarely contribute the maximum allowed by law, as might be expected of someone trying to buy influence. Instead, individual contributions have increased over time merely in proportion to personal income. Excepting lower-income families, who rarely give to campaigns, Americans from the upper-middle class on up give approximately the same percentage of their income, about 0.04 percent, according to Ansolabehere’s research, to politicians and political groups. Corporations also spend relatively little, and their spending has not increased substantially in recent years. “If companies thought they could just buy politicians,” said Timothy Groseclose, an economics professor at George Mason University, “we should see much more money being spent there.”

...

One reason is that buying elections is economically inefficient. Most voters, like most consumers, have defined preferences that are difficult for advertisers to shift. Chevron spent roughly $3 million during a recent campaign backing, certain City Council candidates in Richmond, Calif., where it operates a major refinery. Voters instead chose a slate of candidates who want to raise taxes. “Campaign spending has an extremely small impact on election outcomes, regardless of who does the spending,” the University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt concluded in a 1994 paper. He found that spending an extra $100,000 in a House race might be expected to increase a candidate’s vote total by about 0.33 percentage points. Investors appear to agree that companies can’t make money by investing in political campaigns. A 2004 study found that changes in campaign-finance laws had no discernible impact on the share prices of companies that made donations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

 

[Underseer]

The new money is not going directly to the candidates. Have you not been paying attention?

The money is going to "independent" organizations that theoretically have no connection to the candidate (and you're a moron if you believe that) but just happen to be promoting that particular political candidate as part of their agenda.

So of course they are donating less directly to the candidates. That stuff is made public. They donate to the 501C and they can give unlimited amounts of money in secret. If you were going to buy off a politician, which way would you do it?

There is no reason for you to get worried. Your precious aristocrats are spending more money and increasing their influence over the government just like you always hoped.

 

[Axulus]

The new money is not going directly to the candidates. Have you not been paying attention?

The money is going to "independent" organizations that theoretically have no connection to the candidate (and you're a moron if you believe that) but just happen to be promoting that particular political candidate as part of their agenda.

So of course they are donating less directly to the candidates. That stuff is made public. They donate to the 501C and they can give unlimited amounts of money in secret. If you were going to buy off a politician, which way would you do it?

There is no reason for you to get worried. Your precious aristocrats are spending more money and increasing their influence over the government just like you always hoped.

This figure includes all amounts spent to influence the elections (except the aforementioned ~$100M in the OP). They are also not allowed to keep the amounts spent secret (they are allowed to keep the donors secret in certain circumstances). Try again.

You can see that data here: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/

 

[Arctish]

So after Citizens United, where is all the new money that the left predicted would be entering politics?

Alaska.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Also in the new budget, rich people can donate 10x more money directly to candidates.

 

[ksen]

These figures do not include a few hundred million dollars in unreported spending on issue ads.

That seems like an important number to leave out.

 

[ksen]

From the OP link:

The low level of campaign spending, however, may obscure the real power of wealthy individuals and corporations. Michael Munger, a professor of political science at Duke University, told me that companies are mostly satisfied with the status quo, so they behave more like firefighters than like police officers. Instead of getting involved in each campaign, in other words, they sit back and wait for an alarm to ring. “Incumbents and large corporations can basically spend as much as it would take to defeat some change that would harm them,” he said. “And most of the time that is zero. But the potential is basically infinite.” They spend around 10 times as much on lobbying, suggesting that it’s less effective to influence the selection of policy makers than to influence the policy-making process itself. “If you can give a key piece of information to a politician,” Groseclose told me, “that seems to be more valuable than a campaign contribution.”

The author also brings up gerrymandering creating fewer competitive elections. I wonder if anyone has looked at the trend of spending in competitive races?

 

[Nice Squirrel]

These figures do not include a few hundred million dollars in unreported spending on issue ads.

That seems like an important number to leave out.

Naw, nobody sees those.

 

[laughing dog]

Maybe it will take some time for the effects of Citizen's United to work out. I also think comparing spending in an off-POTUS election to spending in a POTUS election is comparing apples to oranges.

I also find it interesting that proponents of free markets find the donations and campaign spending are ineffectual. The efficiency in free markets depends in part on rational consumers (people who know what they want and what they are purchasing). Clearly the consumers of donations and campaign spending think they are buying something of value when they contribute. So, either the empirical findings are the result of poor scholarship or there are some markets that are not as efficient as people seem to think.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Well considering what is in the new budget bill, those donors are getting exactly what they paid for.

 

[ksen]

After Citizens United: The Story in the States

 

[ksen]

http://www.cfinst.org/pdf/state/state-indep-spdg_2006-10_working-paper-as-released-22october2012.pdf
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/09/24/15551/non-candidate-spending-increases-state-elections
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/25/super-pacs-spending-local-races/5617121/

The biggest effect of Citizens United to date seems to be the shifting of spending from directly controlled spending to indepently controlled spending. Citizens United also seemed to open the way for large increases in outside spending on local races rather than federal ones.

 

[KeepTalking]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/magazine/who-wants-to-buy-a-politician.html?_r=0

The new money is not going directly to the candidates. Have you not been paying attention?

The money is going to "independent" organizations that theoretically have no connection to the candidate (and you're a moron if you believe that) but just happen to be promoting that particular political candidate as part of their agenda.

So of course they are donating less directly to the candidates. That stuff is made public. They donate to the 501C and they can give unlimited amounts of money in secret. If you were going to buy off a politician, which way would you do it?

There is no reason for you to get worried. Your precious aristocrats are spending more money and increasing their influence over the government just like you always hoped.

This figure includes all amounts spent to influence the elections (except the aforementioned ~$100M in the OP). They are also not allowed to keep the amounts spent secret (they are allowed to keep the donors secret in certain circumstances). Try again.

You can see that data here: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/

Wait a minutes, that data is not from the same source as your original NY Times link, and the NY Times article makes no mention of where they obtained their data. How do you know they used the data presented in the Open Secrets link?

Also, the NY Times link only says that they are referring to money spent by "Candidates and other interested parties", it is in no way clear that they included the Outside Money data from Open Secrets. Looking at the Open Secrets link, we can see that in the next two election cycles after Citizens United was decided in 2010, that this outside spending markedly increased. In 2012, this spending was more than triple the 2010 spending from outside sources, and in 2014, it was still more than double. So, yes, as was predicted, Citizens United enabled massive additional spending on elections, and no, it is not very likely that this additional $500 million to $1 billion in spending is included in the NY Times article.

ETA: The NY Times does reference the Center for Responsible Politics, which is the non-profit that runs Open Secrets. I did not catch that before writing the above. It still seems disingenuous to not note that the outside spending enabled by Citizens United tripled in 2012, and doubled in 2014 over the pre CU spending.

 

[untermensche]

So basically the point of the thread is to crow about how a bad Court decision didn't make a terrible situation worse?

If we exclude money not sent to candidates but given directly to the media?

 

[ksen]

This figure includes all amounts spent to influence the elections (except the aforementioned ~$100M in the OP). They are also not allowed to keep the amounts spent secret (they are allowed to keep the donors secret in certain circumstances). Try again.

You can see that data here: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/

The OP article said "hundreds of millions" not "about a hundred million".

 

[Axulus]

Maybe it will take some time for the effects of Citizen's United to work out. I also think comparing spending in an off-POTUS election to spending in a POTUS election is comparing apples to oranges.

I also find it interesting that proponents of free markets find the donations and campaign spending are ineffectual. The efficiency in free markets depends in part on rational consumers (people who know what they want and what they are purchasing). Clearly the consumers of donations and campaign spending think they are buying something of value when they contribute. So, either the empirical findings are the result of poor scholarship or there are some markets that are not as efficient as people seem to think.

You mean feeling good about donating to a guy you support is not rational? On what basis?

 

[Axulus]

The new money is not going directly to the candidates. Have you not been paying attention?

The money is going to "independent" organizations that theoretically have no connection to the candidate (and you're a moron if you believe that) but just happen to be promoting that particular political candidate as part of their agenda.

So of course they are donating less directly to the candidates. That stuff is made public. They donate to the 501C and they can give unlimited amounts of money in secret. If you were going to buy off a politician, which way would you do it?

There is no reason for you to get worried. Your precious aristocrats are spending more money and increasing their influence over the government just like you always hoped.

This figure includes all amounts spent to influence the elections (except the aforementioned ~$100M in the OP). They are also not allowed to keep the amounts spent secret (they are allowed to keep the donors secret in certain circumstances). Try again.

You can see that data here: https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/

Wait a minutes, that data is not from the same source as your original NY Times link, and the NY Times article makes no mention of where they obtained their data. How do you know they used the data presented in the Open Secrets link?

Also, the NY Times link only says that they are referring to money spent by "Candidates and other interested parties", it is in no way clear that they included the Outside Money data from Open Secrets. Looking at the Open Secrets link, we can see that in the next two election cycles after Citizens United was decided in 2010, that this outside spending markedly increased. In 2012, this spending was more than triple the 2010 spending from outside sources, and in 2014, it was still more than double. So, yes, as was predicted, Citizens United enabled massive additional spending on elections, and no, it is not very likely that this additional $500 million to $1 billion in spending is included in the NY Times article.

ETA: The NY Times does reference the Center for Responsible Politics, which is the non-profit that runs Open Secrets. I did not catch that before writing the above. It still seems disingenuous to not note that the outside spending enabled by Citizens United tripled in 2012, and doubled in 2014 over the pre CU spending.

Yes, the data is from that organization. From the article:

according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics.

I just posted that link to prove that there is data on outside spending and is required to be publicly disclosed, unlike as was claimed in the post I was responding to (that it was "secret").

 

[laughing dog]

Maybe it will take some time for the effects of Citizen's United to work out. I also think comparing spending in an off-POTUS election to spending in a POTUS election is comparing apples to oranges.

I also find it interesting that proponents of free markets find the donations and campaign spending are ineffectual. The efficiency in free markets depends in part on rational consumers (people who know what they want and what they are purchasing). Clearly the consumers of donations and campaign spending think they are buying something of value when they contribute. So, either the empirical findings are the result of poor scholarship or there are some markets that are not as efficient as people seem to think.

You mean feeling good about donating to a guy you support is not rational? On what basis?

First you substantiate that a large portion of the donations to candidates is based on a feel good motive and then we can discuss it.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Maybe it will take some time for the effects of Citizen's United to work out. I also think comparing spending in an off-POTUS election to spending in a POTUS election is comparing apples to oranges.

I also find it interesting that proponents of free markets find the donations and campaign spending are ineffectual. The efficiency in free markets depends in part on rational consumers (people who know what they want and what they are purchasing). Clearly the consumers of donations and campaign spending think they are buying something of value when they contribute. So, either the empirical findings are the result of poor scholarship or there are some markets that are not as efficient as people seem to think.

You mean feeling good about donating to a guy you support is not rational? On what basis?

Feeling good is emotional, it does not mean that it is in your best interest or a rational choice. The fallacy of this is the belief in rationality in the marketplace.