The Influence Of Financial Campaigning

Is financial backing the key to winning a presidential election? Throughout the course of history, campaigning has been an important and effective way to gain support for a candidate during elections. However, questions have been raised about whether or not spending more leads to more success. In different scenarios financial backing can be more or less important to the popularity of a candidate, but overall it is not the only factor that influences the votes that the candidate receives in primaries as well as on election day. Money has been found to have major and minor effects on presidential elections based on campaign funding, super PACs, and statistics from the 2012 election. Political scientist Michael Franz conducted a study that found advertising is not as influential on elections as it may seem to be. It …show more content…
According to Franz’s study, “The maximum effect he found works out to about six percentage points — if one party ran its maximum number of ads and the other ran its minimum” (Washington Post). Even in states that do not generally identify as either democratic or republican, the use of advertising has rather minimal influence on how the people there vote. Advertising can be important in introducing a candidate that was otherwise previously unheard of, but by the time the election rolls around information about the candidates is widespread even without constant advertising. Information does not come strictly from the candidate directly but also from other organizations, such as super PACs.
Super PACs (political action committees) are growing in popularity among candidates. By definition, “ Super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money