As a result, campaign costs in the UK are significantly lower than in the US. This means that parties which contest all seats are limited to roughly £19.5 million in campaign expenditures. In the UK, limits are set at £30,000 per seat contested by each party. Several other countries, including Canada and the UK, successfully cap election spending. With an increased amount of private money in the system, most candidates have chosen to forgo public subsidies in recent elections, rendering the spending limit obsolete. In presidential elections, candidates are subject to spending limits if they accept public funding. This percentage has increased in every election cycle since and, in 2018, large donations accounted for 71% of total fundraising, according to data from Open Secrets. In 2010, large donations accounted for 62.6% of the value of donations to all candidates, parties, and independent spending groups such as Super Pacs. While these cases show the extremes of small donor versus large donor fundraising strategies, financial disclosures reveal an overall trend toward large donor strategies since the Citizens United ruling. This is an increase from the 2016 figure of roughly US$1.4 billion. At the time of writing, independent spending on the 2020 election has already exceeded comparable spending in the 2016 cycle, with US$1.6 billion being spent in this way. This increase continued, albeit at a slower rate, reaching a record high of US$1.4 billion in 2016. Comparing the electoral cycle directly before Citizens United in 2008 to the next comparable cycle in 2012, using data from the Center for Responsive Politics via the open source website Open Secrets, reveals an increase of almost 600% in just four years. Since the Citizens United ruling, election expenditure has significantly increased, with an immediate explosion of independent spending from groups such as Super Pacs, directly after the decision. As the 2020 presidential election race nears its end, it’s worth looking back at what has changed in the past decade, and what it tells us about how money is being spent.Įlection 2020 sees record $11 billion in campaign spending, mostly from a handful of super-rich donors
2008 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN COINAGE FREE
They are subject to fewer regulations, due to the constitutional protection of free speech, are often able to raise money from anonymous sources due to legal loopholes, and are permitted to receive unlimited donations from corporate and union sources.Īs a comparative political finance scholar, my ongoing research involves analysing the development of political finance regulations across a number of advanced liberal democracies. While direct corporate and union donations to candidates remain illegal, Super Pacs have been described as “shadow political parties”, which are permitted to raise funds to run their own campaigns independently of candidates. This ruling, known as Citizen United, meant that corporations and unions could spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, paving the way for the production of what has become known as Super Pacs.
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