William_T._Bianco,_David_T._Canon]_American_Polit

Electoral campaigns 323

TA B L E

9. 4

Candidate,

P a r t y, a n d

Interest-Group

Election

Fund-Raising,

2016–2018

Candidates and political parties raise

and spend a great deal of money in

their campaigns. Do these numbers

help explain the high reelection rates

for members of Congress?

2016 2018

Presidential Candidates

Republican $333,127,164 —

Democrat $563,756,928 —

Congressional Candidates

House incumbents $664,873,622 $711,117,909

House challengers $149,000,679 $ 4 3 8,9 27,947

House open-seat candidates $214,460,277 $384,890,754

Senate incumbents $368,532,005 $539, 3 8 9,767

Senate challengers $203,163,709 $350,187,926

Senate open-seat candidates $114,716,739 $ 8 2,8 9 0,9 27

Political Parties

Republicans $969,156,764 $859,438,792

Democrats $1,279,204,717 $802,172,215

Independent Expenditures $ 1 , 6 8 7, 0 8 2 ,9 5 3 $1,110,325,920

To ta l s $6,113,385,432 $5,279,342,217

Source: Calculated by authors from data at http://www.opensecrets.org (accessed 11/6/18).

and 2018. More than $6 billion was raised during 2016, a presidential election year,

and $5 billion for the 2018 midterms. Moreover, campaign spending is concentrated

among a relatively small number of organizations with sizable electioneering

budgets. In each of the last several election cycles, the largest organizations have

spent hundreds of millions of dollars on contesting the election.

The principal concern about all this campaign cash is that the amount of

money spent on candidates’ campaigns might matter more than the candidates’

qualifications or issue positions. That is, candidates—in particular, wealthy

candidates who could self-fund their campaigns—could get elected regardless

of how good a job they would do, simply because they had more money than

competing candidates to pay for campaign ads, polls, a large staff, and mobilization

efforts. Another concern is that individuals and organizations or corporations

that can afford to make large contributions (or to fund their own electioneering

efforts) might be able to dictate election outcomes or, by funding campaigns,

garner a disproportionate amount of influence over the subsequent behavior of

elected officials. In the main, these concerns affect soft money contributions and

independent expenditures because the current law places no limits on how much soft

money a party can collect, or on the size of a group’s independent expenditures (see

the Take a Stand feature).

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