[EpiphanyMachine]

The only reason they spend that on advertising is because of their ROI. The people funding the super pacs aren't just giving their money away without some kind of return.

The difference between the two is one I can choose to avoid, the other is affecting who chooses my rights and laws with less focus on the people affected by those decisions and more on the affect to those funding their campaigns.

[rayiner]

Right. And that means the return must be shit, because Colgate-Palmolive finds it worth its while to spend twice as much moneg advertising toothpaste and dish soap as all the wealthy individuals and companies in the country find it worth their while to invest in political advertising.

Put differently, corporate political advertising amounts to about 0.5% of advertising in the US. That tells you a lot about how unimportant it is to companies’ bottom lines. It’s basic arithmetic. These political decisions are worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. If corporations invest only a billion influencing them, that means the influence is very attenuated: it only affects votes at the margins.

[hodgesrm]

Can you cite a source for that? This anecdotal but my impression has been that self-funded candidates do not do especially well in elections. Mike Huffington's run against Diane Feinstein was a failure [0] despite committing an enormous about of his money to the campaign. Also, the Koch Brothers' direct spending on elections has similarly not been especially effective according to some accounts. [1]

There are ample reasons to be concerned about the effect of money on the American political system. Personally I am more focused on regulatory capture through lobbying than elections per se. In the current system it looks to me as if billionaires win regardless of who's in office.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Huffington [1] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/05/the-koch-brother...