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US Election: How Can It Cost $6bn?

Friday, August 3, 2012 21:35

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The estimated price tag for the US elections in November is almost $6bn (£3.8bn). Why so much?

“The sky is the limit here,” says Michael Toner, former chair of the US Federal Election Commission.

“I don’t think you can spend too much.”

In a time of general belt-tightening, it may sound like a surprising argument, but Toner believes there should be more – not less – spending on US elections.

Anything that engages voters, and makes them more likely to turn out is, he says, a good thing.

“It’s very healthy in terms of American politics… it’s a symptom of a very vigorous election season, there’s a lot at stake here.”

On 6 November, Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is set to challenge Barack Obama for the presidency, and polls suggest the margin between them could be wafer thin.

New figures just released by the Center for Responsive Politics, an independent research group which tracks money in politics, estimate the total cost of November’s elections (for the presidency, House of Representatives and Senate) will come in at $5.8bn (£3.7bn) – more than the entire annual GDP of Malawi, and up 7% on 2008.It makes UK election spending look microscopic by comparison. A total of £31m ($49m) was spent by all parties in the last general election in the UK two years ago – making US spending 120 times as much, and 23 times as much per person.

“You could say we’ve gotten into a crazy world, where the cost of elections has sky-rocketed, and that we are in a wacko world of crazy spending,” says Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ads.

But, he says, “it all depends what apples and oranges you want to compare”.

Franz argues that US elections are “relatively cheap” when compared with spending on, for example, the US military operation in Afghanistan.

Michael Toner has his own favourite analogy: “Americans last year spent over $7bn [£4.5bn] on potato chips – isn’t the leader of the free world worth at least that?”

Online campaigning is the biggest area of growth, but it still accounts for a relatively modest amount of money spent.

TV campaign ads reign supreme in the battle for votes (at least in terms of costs), eating up, it is estimated, over half of all campaign spending.

“People are carpet bombed,” says Philip Davies, director of the Eccles Centre for American Studies in London.For some in the battleground states, where ads are most densely targeted, it can get a bit much.

“It’s extremely annoying,” says Katie Loiselle, a 26-year-old teacher living in Virginia, which used to be a safe win for the Republicans, but is now a crucial swing state.

Loiselle is one of the much-coveted undecided voters. She voted for Obama in 2008, but this time she is not sure.

In theory, she should be a plum candidate for persuasion. In practice, she does all she can to avoid what, over three months before election day, is already starting to feel like an onslaught.

“I’ll change my channel when they come on… I might start flipping through a magazine or talking to someone.

“It’s not like what they are going to say is going to rouse my intelligence. It just seems they are spending a whole lot of money bashing each other. CONTACTS AND STORY By Cordelia Hebblethwaite

BBC News, Washington DC

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