r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/jstamper • 1d ago
US Elections Does Wealth create a substantial potential advantage in U.S. elections?
A citizen with substantial financial resources can exercise political influence far beyond what their single vote represents.
The American political system does not give wealthy people extra votes. It gives them the ability to deploy vastly greater resources in the political system surrounding those votes.
Wealth creates a substantial potential advantage in U.S. elections, particularly when wealth can be converted into campaign spending. In the 2024 federal cycle, congressional candidates raised about $3.8 billion, parties about $2.7 billion, and PACs about $15.7 billion. PACs spent about $15.5 billion.
the 2026 cycle is already following the same pattern: through June 30, 2026, PACs had raised $8.3 billion and spent $6.5 billion, while congressional candidates had raised $2.8 billion.
A wealthy person or organization can put enormous resources behind a candidate or cause. Super PACs make this particularly powerful because they can accept unlimited contributions and spend unlimited amounts independently of candidates.
Wealthy donors can also fund parties, PACs, advocacy organizations and lobbying operations and potentially gain access to policymakers.
Money buys things that matter:
television and digital advertising
staff
polling
voter databases
mail
field organizers
legal resources
opposition research
get-out-the-vote operations
the ability to respond to attacks
The Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2026 that federal limits on certain coordinated expenditures by political parties violate the First Amendment. That potentially gives party organizations even more room to spend on behalf of their candidates.
Does this limit who can realistically run, or does it promote corruption?
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u/Splenda 16h ago
Of course this limits who can run, and of course it promotes corruption.
Advertising and television work. They are extremely expensive. It is nearly impossible to attain high office or to keep it without millions of dollars of other people's money. Therefore the rich can buy the government they want. Therefore Americans have become cynical, even nihilistic, and the shooting has started.
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u/macnalley 13h ago
Andrew Yang was kind of crack-potty, but I still maintain that democracy vouchers are one of the best ideas that no one ever talks about.
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u/socialistrob 14h ago
. It is nearly impossible to attain high office or to keep it without millions of dollars of other people's money. Therefore the rich can buy the government they want
That doesn't follow logically. Yes running for office takes money but that money doesn't have to be raised exclusively from rich people. As long as a candidate has sufficient funds to get their message out they can have a real chance.
Campaign spending also doesn't guarantee results and if voters don't like something then even with a billion dollars it's hard to convince them to vote for it.
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u/Splenda 13h ago
Bigger ad budgets win most of the time, which, in our first-past-the-post system, is all it takes to run the table.
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u/theartolater 13h ago
"Most of the time" is held up by "given that many races aren't contested, or are nominally contested."
My representative hasn't seen a serious contender in almost 20 years. He wins because he's popular in the district and because his opponents have all been clowns, not because he has more money.
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u/reasonably_plausible 12h ago
Bigger ad budgets win most of the time,
This is heavily skewed by the nature of non-competitive districts, though. When massive chunks of the House are in districts where they don't face a significant challenger, of course they spend more and win, the other party is only putting up token resistance.
When looking at competitive races, the Sunshine Foundation couldn't find a significant link between the amount of money spent and chance of victory.
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u/Splenda 10h ago
Then why does everyone in federal elected office spend half of their time begging for ad money?
Meanwhile, I agree that self-sorting by geography is a huge problem. It's been underway for two generations (nicely documented in Bishop's old book The Big Sort), although I can't help wondering if this, too, is a product of the polarization brought by the rise of political television and the money that feeds it.
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u/Leopold_Darkworth 14h ago
Current FCC rules require broadcast television stations to give candidates the lowest possible rate for ads. But they’re free to charge non-candidates (like SuperPACs) whatever they want. Now the SuperPACs and other non-candidate entities are trying to overturn even this extremely slim barrier to preventing gazillionaires from buying elections.
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u/Mist_Rising 13h ago
The supreme court just changed that, super-pacs also get cheaper rates now.
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u/AdUpstairs7106 13h ago edited 13h ago
Because of course the corrupt justices made things better for Super PACs.
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u/Mist_Rising 13h ago
Kagan isn't really someone reddit usually calls corrupt, do you have reason to do so?
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u/Y0___0Y 16h ago
It absolutely can move the voting tallies by one or two percentage points, which can be a very significant advantage.
But if a candidate is down 10% no amount of money will make up that gap.
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u/link3945 16h ago
I think this is accurate in general elections (we can quibble with the exact edge, but it's certainly more than 1pt and less than 10), less so for primaries. Rick Jackson bought the GOP nomination for governor in Georgia. If he didn't pour millions into his campaign, he's not getting that nomination. Primaries are so much smaller that one candidate can suck up all the air and bully the other candidates to effectively drop out.
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u/Kaiser_Cal 15h ago
Harris outspent Trump 2-1 and still lost. Going back to 2016, Jeb Bush outspent Trump by 5-1 (depending on the metric) and got crushed.
Money is an advantage, but it is not decisive and there multiple other factors at play.
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u/ILikeCommunism97 13h ago
Harris outspent Trump 2-1 and still lost.
This is only true if you ignore PAC spending, and I don't think the PACs are nearly independent from the campaigns enough for that to be accurate.
Money is an advantage, but it is not decisive and there multiple other factors at play.
This is true, but defining "money" here as only what the campaigns spend is misleading.
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u/NoDig3444 16h ago
Wealth is obviously an advantage, but the advantage gets very overstated. If money was the only thing that mattered, Hillary would have won in 2016 and Harris would have won in 2024. It's also not just billionaires and corporations. 40% of Harris's donors in 2024 came from individuals giving less than $200.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 16h ago
This analysis skips superpacs, which are I think the kind of funding being discussed.
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u/FickleNecessary1225 17h ago
Yes very much so. Especially after the ruling of Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission (2010)
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u/ILikeCommunism97 14h ago edited 14h ago
You are right, and it isn't just CU, SCOTUS has spent nearly three decades hollowing out campaign finance law to the benefit of the rich. Other cases worth checking to understand the way they've done this are:
McCutcheon v. FEC
FEC v. Ted Cruz
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC
Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett
And so on. John Roberts has made a concerted and intentional effort to allow rich people to have more control over our elections. He gotta be removed, along with the other conservatives.
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u/theartolater 12h ago
Okay, so show us how you can address those while also protecting the first amendment, please.
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u/zlefin_actual 16h ago
Iirc the research on this is that it helps more on the low end than the high end; though it can provide a modest benefit at any level. In particular people strongly tend to not vote for people they don't know; so for a less known person getting enough money to get the name recognition so people consider you makes a big difference. for a short pithy way of putting out: you can't buy an election, but you can buy a shot at an election.
Many elections are close, so even if it only changes things by 1 or 2 %, that cna be enough to change an outcome. So it makes sense that people may spend large amounts of money, especially when things are near tipping points, as the effects of different people elected can be quite pronounced.
I haven't looked at that supreme court ruling; I'd guess its another of the unsound rulings the republicans on the court have been putting forth of late. Which means its quite possble to change if we get actually sound jurists onto the court more.
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u/Hartastic 14h ago
It's clearly a substantial advantage.
But it's a lot like being a baseball team with a much larger payroll than most of the league. It's not "the team with the biggest payroll always wins the World Series" but it probably is fair to say that most years, most of the teams with the biggest payrolls will at least be in the running and most of the teams with the lowest won't be. You will get outliers but the overall trend is still pretty obvious.
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u/RonocNYC 16h ago
Citizens United cemented the two most destructive principles in American politics: that Money is speech and that Corporations are free to engage in unlimited amounts of speech.
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u/HappyBarbarian 16h ago
It undoubtedly promotes corruption because organizations and individuals can, even more easily than before, “hide” what is quid pro quo financial backing. Also, it promotes a thing I hate: astroturfing. Where monied interests pretend to be grassroots organizations.
Basically I think the best solution is daylight. Organizations should be able to spend as much as they want on political endeavors, that is indeed free speech, but concealing it shouldn’t be legal. There’s a limit to how much advertising and spending can sway public opinion so now nefarious actors have decided to be sneaky about it.
A good example right now is the AI industry. In my corner of media, they are on an advertising blitz. However, they seem to realize it’s not working and public opinion is still going down. So they’re doing sneaky stuff like creating and backing organizations that are for “responsible AI” and “making AI pay their fair share for electricity”.
Here’s some ideas I’d like to see:
1) Congress people are paid significantly more but they and their households are banned from stock trading. Retirement accounts that are not actively managed are okay.
2) ANY gift to congress people or regulators over $200 adjusted for inflation, is not reportable, it’s banned. Except for gifts from family for like inheritance and stuff. Any gift over the $200 must be reported publicly. Politicians should be allowed to accept a lunch, not a private plane ride.
3) Political non-profits of any kind have to reveal their top donors on the front page of their website or public documents for donations over a certain amount
4) Congress people and federal regulators are banned from entering the industries they regulate for like 5 years. Industry professionals can enter into regulatory bodies but must divest of any financial assets in that industry and are banned from re-entering the industry for 10 years.
5) Any media companies over a certain size must reveal their top donors and record high level editorial direction not unlike an earnings call for a publicly traded company
6) any organization can do “get out the vote” and voting assistance (like driving people to the polls, or handing out water), but they’re subject to public disclosure like a political nonprofit
6) bills containing language directly suggested by outside organizations must have source citations
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u/Seattleman1955 12h ago
I think people have "wealth" all wrong regarding the effect it has on elections. It's not about the 1% and the money they can spend on elections.
It's about the 10% and the 20% and what they will definitely not vote for, which is people like AOC and Bernie Sanders, a part of the party that wants to tax everyone doing well at all.
All they care about are the "poor" and taxing anyone to death that is productive at all.
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u/JKlerk 15h ago edited 15h ago
Absolutely not. If it did, Nelson Rockefeller, Ross Perot and Steve Forbes would not have been failures. .
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u/ILikeCommunism97 13h ago
Examples of losses don't change that it is an advantage. You'd need to find examples where someone who isn't rich or capable of spending millions/billions beat someone who is.
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u/JKlerk 12h ago edited 12h ago
It's not an advantage because billionaires don't like spending their own money. I also forgot about Bloomberg.
What is an advantage is public exposure, managerial experience and public opinion. Someone like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, who had a rabid fan base, are viewed as visionary, and had decades of experience managing a huge organization.
Money doesn't win elections. Trump spent $89M and Clinton over $300M in 2016.
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u/mrjcall 17h ago
If you don't like what's going on with certain types of donors and their influence, blame Congress who makes laws determining how such things are regulated. No one else is to blame. Wealthy will always use their money to influence as much as possible. Nothing wrong with it till it's illegal.
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u/thebarbalag 16h ago
It's not Congress. It's the system they're a part of. A capitalist government will always serve the needs of capital. Citizens United simply pulled away the veil that required politicians to occasionally actually do something for their constituents to maintain their position. Now they only need to serve their donors.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 16h ago
The Supreme Court overruled campaign finance restrictions passed by Congress.
They are to blame.
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u/theartolater 12h ago
Congress passed campaign finance restrictions that violated the First Amendment.
Congress is to blame.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 12h ago
Previous supreme courts disagreed. Why are you so confident that Supreme Court was the correct one?
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u/theartolater 12h ago
Sure seems like the more recent rulings better conform to the text of the Constitution.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 12h ago
Or to your bias.
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u/theartolater 12h ago
Maybe, but I don't see how the previous rulings really accounted for the free speech issues that Citizens United and the like fixed.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 11h ago
Pretty easy to argue that money isn’t speech.
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u/theartolater 11h ago
Absolutely easy to argue, but a little more complicated when it brushes up against the First Amendment. Like, Citizens United wasn't really about money being speech, but about whether speech enabled via corporate expenditure was bannable. Given that the government argued they could ban books under the law before Citizens United....
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 11h ago
Well, whether corporations are people is also arguable.
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u/Imaginary_Fan5407 16h ago
If you truly believe that the only thing that makes something wrong is its legality you have a disgusting world view
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u/absolutefunkbucket 14h ago
Obviously everyone knows that contributions to political campaigns has a hard and fast moral limit of… uh…
More money than I have, I guess?
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u/mrjcall 16h ago
I have a very realistic and practical world view unlike yours which is apparently built on the fantasy that the very wealthy always have altruistic intent. A few do, many don't..
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u/TheCoelacanth 15h ago
You have an idiotic, nihilistic and morally bankrupt world view. Obviously no one thinks the ultra wealthy are going to act altruistically; that doesn't mean their actions aren't wrong.
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u/mrjcall 15h ago
So who is the bad guy here, one that looks at the world through a reality lens or one who prefers a fantasy lens??
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u/TheCoelacanth 14h ago
Bad people are the people who do bad things; not the people who say that doing bad things is bad. You're not looking at reality; you're just letting people off the hook for their actions.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 17h ago
Very strange way to end the post!
What corruption promotion are you alleging? None of the “things that matter” you have listed appear to be corrupt.
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u/Ralh3 17h ago
You don't believe that musk injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into getting gop elected is corrupt?
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u/Avatar_exADV 16h ago
It's a question of whether you believe political participation is a right, or an exercise of power.
If you look at the issue as one where individuals have a right to participate in the process, then just as you have a right to share your opinion with someone and try to convince them to vote for someone, he's got the right to share his opinion with someone and try to convince them. Even though functionally you're limited by your resources in how many people you can reach, and he's much less limited in those resources, the -right- of both of you to do so is the same.
If you look at the issue as one of the exercise of power, then you're seeking to prevent him from exercising his power to convince a million voters via spending a bunch of money; in other words, he doesn't have a right to participate in the political process and convince those voters. But if he doesn't have that right, neither do you. Just as you'd like to slap a big "stfu" sticker over his mouth, someone else might want to do the same to you. (And, as a matter of function, given that you're the one without resources, it's a lot easier to shut you up than it is to shut Musk up!)
At the end of the day, our courts have decided that both of you have that right, and both of you can exercise it.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 16h ago
It's a question of whether you believe political participation is a right, or an exercise of power.
Congress passed laws limiting individual spending so that we all have reasonably equal participation potential.
The Supreme Court overruled that, but I believe it’s a right that should be managed for equal participation.
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u/Avatar_exADV 14h ago
That's not consistent with the right -as written-. The Constitution doesn't say "you have a right to free speech up to 10,000 people, but if it's person 10,001, the government can shut you up."
You might not like that the Constitution is written that way, but it is. You can advocate for it to be amended. Unlikely to succeed, but that's true of all amendments.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 14h ago
The courts have consistently disagreed with your interpretation - even the court of Citizen’s United didn’t go as far as you.
So you support unequal participation potential and stretch legal interpretation beyond the courts.
What’s up with that?
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u/absolutefunkbucket 15h ago edited 14h ago
Individuals can spend as much money as they like giving to a super PAC, what are you talking about?
Edit: clarifying “super PAC” here
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 15h ago
That was not so before Citizens United.
Again, the Supreme Court generated this. Not Congress.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 14h ago
Yes it was. You can Google this stuff
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 14h ago
Yes you can. Please do so.
Traditional PACs still have individual limits.
Campaigns still have individual limits.
The big donations go to super PACs which were created after citizens united.
Please Google away.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 14h ago
Sorry, “super PAC”, I accidentally a word.
“Super PACs” are just organizations that can’t give money directly to candidates and before Citizen’s United you could donate as much money as you wanted to any organization that did that.
Citizens United isn’t even a PAC.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 14h ago edited 14h ago
Super PACs did not exist before Citizen’s United. They came about as a consequence of Citizens United. Please. Google.
PACs existed, with limited individual donations and an annual total aggregate cap (also struck down by the Supreme Court).
Before citizen’s United individual donations were limited.
Edit: the total aggregate cap applied to all donations to campaigns, parties, and PACS.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 15h ago
That’s very literally not corruption.
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u/Ralh3 15h ago
Go read the definition dude, its literally in the dictionary
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u/absolutefunkbucket 14h ago
1
a
: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people (such as government officials or police officers)Oh no following the law is so dishonest and illegal
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u/daluzy 16h ago
You don't believe that Soros injecting 128 million in 2022, or 103 million in 2026 into getting dems elected is corrupt?
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u/Hartastic 14h ago
Frankly there's more money in Elon Musk's couch cushions than Soros' net worth. The difference in their wealth is roughly a trillion dollars.
Relevant, I guess? But basically a distraction.
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u/daluzy 14h ago
You want it to be a distraction but the money flows on both sides, and it is a shame.
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u/Hartastic 14h ago
If one thing is a thousand times bigger than the second thing, yes, the second thing is a distraction.
That's not politics. That's just math.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 14h ago
George Soros has spent more money on politics worldwide than Elon Musk has. At least 100 times over, maybe more.
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u/Hartastic 12h ago
Given the laughable ease of obfuscating that kind of spending I'm positive you don't have any kind of accurate metrics on this.
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u/absolutefunkbucket 12h ago
Haha okay yeah Soros has no idea how to hide his political contributions across the globe but Musk does because something something, I guess
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u/Hartastic 12h ago
You're being slapstick about it but it still concedes the point.
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u/che-che-chester 16h ago
I might word it as wealth 'opens the door for potential corruption' vs. 'promotes corruption'. That buys into the theory that all rich people are corrupt, which obviously isn't true.
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