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chronotis
Former (failed) candidate here, state legislative race in a smaller state that's not generally described as competitive. Money = time. When large donors can deploy large amounts of cash, it relieves you of the need to spend tons of time raising money and you can instead spend that time on other things of greater ROI or that can scale your outreach to a larger audience.
arduanika
I guess that means that now, AI is helping these politicians save time and increase their productivity!
chronotis
There are some efforts to do exactly that, though overall I'd observe that the general level of technological sophistication / early adopter-ism is pretty low in the politician cohort. There are tools for developing campaign plans, direct mail messaging, text campaign content, etc.; we used AI social media ad generation tools to help fill our content pipeline. We developed some internal tools to assist with direct mail fundraising letters to PACs / labor unions / etc.
arduanika
Not exactly what I was joking about, but interesting nonetheless.

I suppose some amount of adoption by politicians and staffers is good, so that they can see what this new thing is, and crucially, what it is not. But of course it comes at the cost of making a new class of errors. Hopefully these will be contained enough to mainly just serve as a learning experience for them.

xyst
That is awful. Corporate money, billionaires need to stay out of politics.

Yet another reason why Citizens United v FEC was an absolute mistake.

chronotis
I wouldn't object, though I also don't see how to put the genie back in the Citizens United bottle.
kridsdale1
Amend the constitution. All campaigns can only spend so much money. Other countries have done this.
mkw5053
Notable that 'Leading the Future' explicitly models itself on Fairshake, which spent $130 million in 2024 and achieved 48 of 51 endorsed candidates winning. At that success rate, $100 million in AI PAC spending could determine 30-40 House seats' positions on AI regulation. For context, the EU's AI Act passed with zero industry PAC spending, while China's AI regulations proceeded without Western-style lobbying.
germinalphrase
“ Fairshake supports candidates committed to securing the United States as the home to innovators building the next generation of the internet.

Providing blockchain innovators the ability to develop their networks under a clearer regulatory and legal framework is vital if the broader open blockchain economy is to grow to its full potential here in the United States.

Fairshake is a federal independent expenditure-only committee registered with the Federal Election Commission and supports candidates solely through its independent activities.”

https://www.fairshakepac.com/

guywithahat
From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions. I haven't looked at the fairshake data in-depth but I'd guess they just invested in candidates likely to win who aren't vocally opposed to their position.
justin66
> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.

Which... does not influence elections?

> From what I've seen, spending has almost no effect on competitive elections. Groups like Fairshake are more about punishing candidates who take opposition positions.

A large number of elections for the House of Representatives aren't competitive. The candidate from the incumbent party is going to win no matter how bad they are and no matter how good the other candidates are. No amount of money spent on that election will change things.

However, in a large number of those districts only a small fraction of the voters from that party vote in the primaries or attend the caucuses where that party chooses its candidate. There usually isn't a lot of spending on this. A well funded primary challenger has a very good chance of knocking the incumbent out in the primary or at the caucus.

The threat of this is how Trump keeps the Republicans in the House almost completely under his control. Look at all those Republicans in the House who voted for the "Big Beautiful Bill" and then went home to get completely excoriated by their constituents at town halls for not holding out to get the parts of the bill that were terrible for those constituents removed.

They knew that would be the reaction. But Trump told them that if they didn't vote for it or delayed it to make more changes he'd fund a primary challenger.

digital_sawzall (dead)
kubb
Wow, seats are cheap! We should totally let the people with the most money buy them, that will bring us stability.
bee_rider
I wonder if we could design a system where everybody in the populace chips in a little bit, and the people buy some representatives of our own.
noman-land
I have been thinking the same. Use their own tools against them.
Yeul
Depressingly this is exactly how it went in the 19th century only instead of railway barons we now have tech barons.
itsdrewmiller
“At that rate” - your math only makes sense if their spending is the entire reason those campaigns won. I haven’t dug into the numbers, but if those are house and senate campaigns then it’s a small fraction of total spending.
dkiebd
Who is going to spend a dime in lobbying for or against the EU’s AI Act? The absolutely irrelevant Mistral, which is starved for money and would rather stay on the good side of the European commissioners and oligarchs?
pera
There's simply too much money involved, investors and corporations will do literally everything they can to keep this going...
xyst
Just like the events leading to the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008
bogwog
Even as the bubble is bursting, degenerate gamblers will keep trying to pull that lever.
anthem2025
Awesome, we get to see democracy destroyed so the richest people on the planet can keep their Ponzi scheme.

Added bonus is the water and power it sucks up.

testing22321
This was a very predictable outcome once money was classified as speech.

Rich people have way more of it.

dante9999
US politics is broken, but most AI regulations are poorly designed. Look at EU AI policy. It is not addressing any real problems and is mostly just additional paperwork.
xyst
Silicon Valley is just like the oil and gas industry. This is quite awful.

We need to reverse Citizens United v FEC decision.

bhouston
The degree to which US politics can be bought amazes me as a Canadian. It does seem that $$$ makes right in the US.

It isn’t so much the will of the people but the will of the rich and powerful.

For example, in the last US election there was billions spent in 2024 by the political parties, and outside groups:

Parties themselves: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race

Outside groups: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_group

Aurornis
Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.

In contested elections both sides usually have a large amount of spending. If you only read the headlines you’d think it was only the winning side that spent any money.

Another thing that isn’t obvious is that PACs have high win rates because they’re usually strategic about which races they go after. The money influence can only move the needle a little bit, so they need to pick races and topics where the voters are already close to evenly split.

There have also been a lot of high profile examples of extreme spending on elections that didn’t lead to the desired outcome.

robbie-c
> In contested elections both sides usually have a large amount of spending.

I think you're thinking about this in the wrong way.

What you're saying is that people who don't have a lot of money to spend usually don't make it to the election.

grafmax
Right, it’s those with the wealth who are determining policy. Essentially politics is controlled by the upper class, even if they do fight among themselves.
izzydata
And as soon as some class diving issue comes up where it is the 99.9% against the ultra wealthy it will become a non-partisan issue and get done immediately in favor of the ultra wealthy.
bilbo0s
This.

Money definitely sways elections.

The few case where it doesn't are normally attributable to other problems with the spendy campaign.

In Wisconsin, the conservatives spent enormous sums of money talking about high level worldview issues like DEI and immigration. Which is all well and good if you're in a state where that's relevant maybe? But out here in opioid infested flyover country where people were worried about losing their housing the next week, those worldview kinds of things were just dumb issues to focus so much money on.

So yeah, you can win an election against a big spender. But normally that big spender is actually so dumb and detached from the voters that what's really happening is that they're beating themselves.

nielsbot
I think (hope) there's a limit. And if things get bad enough (sadly) then people will vote for change and their own interests over those of the ownership class. Maybe that's what happened here. But I will also point out that Elon Musk is uniquely detestable. But in most elections the candidate with the most money wins. [1]

Similarly Mamdani in NYC is facing some truly awful candidates.

Someone also pointed out to me that it's not so much the money on a politician's side that sways them, but the threat of PACs et al spending a ton of money to unseat them if they don't "play ball". [2]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-vs-sp...

Yeul
But isn't flyover meth country red anyway?

American politics for all intents and purposes is a very simple game.

AnotherGoodName
Here's something to ponder. A lot of democracies have preferential voting. You vote in order of candidates and then counting votes is done in rounds where the lowest voted candidate is eliminated and those votes go to the next preference. This works well in avoiding a 2 party system since you can vote for third parties but still have your vote counted no matter which way the count lands in the end (eg. if it does come down to the 2 largest parties you haven't wasted a vote on a third party).

When there's no preferential voting system and therefore only two real parties in the political race it's easier to ensure you get the outcome you want either way. PACs don't really need to influence the election directly as much as ensure they have influence on politicians in the only two parties that have any power.

brewdad
This. The next time you hear about how some wealthy person gave money to a controversial candidate, check their sources. There is a high probability that they gave money to both leading candidates. Sometimes they will give more money to their preferred candidate but they want to be sure their interests are protected no matter the outcome.
ch4s3
We actually se an increasing number of elections where the loser outspends the winner by a large margin.
gjsman-1000
Case in point: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. Trump's campaign was about $541M cheaper.

https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race

slipperydippery
This has gotten a lot more complex to accurately track since Citizens United.

Campaign spending isn't even close to the actual total spent on a campaign, any more.

vjvjvjvjghv
The absolute numbers are still astonishing and make it clear that without deep pockets you won’t get anywhere. Maybe you can make an argument that from a certain level on, money doesn’t help anymore. But the minimum amount is still very high.
bhouston
> Case in point: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump. Trump's campaign was about $541M cheaper.

You are skipping Super PACs which is pretty much exclusively ultra rich people political spending.

Here is the Super PAC spending and Kamala was destroyed by pro-Trump spending:

Conservative/Trump: $1,754,585,468

Liberal/Kamala: $786,990,015

https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs

slipperydippery
Combine a very-high necessary floor of funding for a wasteful Red Queen's Race opened up by Citizens United, and a bad system of elections that guarantees only two stably-viable parties, and you've got a system where money may not determine the winner, but it very much determines who even makes it on the ballot and the positions they are allowed to take on various issues, in a big way.
bhouston
> Money has an influence but it’s an exaggeration to think that it’s the only factor.

Massive amounts of money is a requirement in the US. Of course strategy still plays a role but if you do not have massive amounts of money in the first place, you don't matter.

Because you have to raise massive amounts of money, you need to prioritize big spenders, and thus you have to be responsive to the demands of those large donors.

For example Miriam Adelson who gave Trump 1/5 of his total haul, reportedly conditioned her $100M on allowing Israel to annex the West Bank:

https://forward.com/fast-forward/618034/miriam-adelson-fundi...

dpc050505
There can be more than two sides in healthy democracies.
jaredklewis
Said healthy democracies don’t have first past the post voting systems. Our system pretty much ensures only two viable parties.
gdbsjjdn
As a Canadian I don't understand why people think Canada is different. We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made. But look at the concentration of wealth in the Weston family, the McCains, Rogers or the Thomsons.

These folks have tremendous political influence which they are using to roll up Canada's economy and squeeze every cent out of the working class.

alephnerd
> We're just one step behind the US because there's less money to be made

There's plenty to be made - it's just very under the radar.

Anecdotally, extended family of mine run a fairly decent sized construction contracting company out in BC (Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland), and have been having family members and family friends donate as a group for both Conservative and NDP MLAs for over a decade now, as well as helping organize voter drives and non-partisan activities at Gurdwaras (if partisan activities came up, they tended to be in Punjabi and thus not reported on - but tbf, in depth local news is dead in much of Canada as well outside of metros).

Lobbying is common across democracies, but how it manifests is different. I feel that there is also a level of visibility into the American system that really highlights bad actors, but similar scrutiny isn't as common in other countries other than maybe the UK.

HWR_14
Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars.
bhouston
> Is the same not true in Canada? In Edmonton's upcoming elections 39% of the donations came from corporations, but they made up 84% of the donated dollars

It is quite different. Here is how campaign finance works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...

And this includes all PACs and equivalents. We don't have dark money PACs.

JSteph22
>as a Canadian

Canada arguably has an even more ingrained system of lobbying.

keiferski
There are plenty of examples where the candidate which spent the most lost. Or didn't even get to the election: Bloomberg is a good example.

I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5. If anything, "free" advertising like going on a podcast or working at McDonalds as a stunt seems to have more influence.

bhouston
> I'd also bet that the vast, vast majority of voters are already going to vote for their chosen candidate, independently of whether they see $1 billion worth of ads or $5.

This is true of elections in two party systems. Most people have parties they align with and don't switch often. But there are persuadables.

The billions spent on political ads was spent for a reason. Similar to why billions are spent on marketing in general. There is the old adage that sure half of the marketing budget is wasted, but it is never clear which half ahead of time.

https://www.b2bmarketing.net/half-the-money-i-spend-on-adver...

keiferski
There's also the fact that it's something of an arms race, where not spending the billions is not really an option for serious candidates, whether it is "worth it" or not. It's not exactly something that can be tested scientifically, unless a serious candidate wants his campaign to be an experiment.
slipperydippery
Get Out the Vote is where it's at. "True swing" (not self-reported swing, most people lie because they think being a swing voter is more socially desirable, I suppose) is indeed a tiny sliver.

It's about convincing your people they need to show up or the other side will make your grandkids shit in litter boxes, or whatever lies it takes.

goalieca
As a Canadian, I cannot stand the “as a Canadian… $something_smug” trend. We look down on the USA and pretend our poop doesn’t stink.
bhouston
Our political donation system is infinitely better though than the US.
goalieca
One criticism is that parties can be bought too cheaply in Canada.
_joel
Just watched a Benn Jordan video on creepy AI, particularly Flock Safety. No suprise that the some of the same people involved in this article are involved in the data brokerage company (which seems awfully dystopian). They've bumped in hundreds of millions in lobbying.
vimwizard
ever heard of "Laurentian elite" ?
bhouston
> ever heard of "Laurentian elite" ?

I don't think that is the same thing at all. Laurentian elite just refers to Canada's largest population cluster as a whole and saying that the upper class in general is influential, sure. But it is far from saying that a small number of billionaires are absolute key in the Canadian elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_elite

Canada has significant limits to political spending and I think that is amazing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in...

CyberDildonics
It wasn't always this extreme, but key decisions on what is allowed in the media and where money can come from have turned it into what it is now.
camdroidw
Not really true, Kamala outspent Trump 2:1 and had the media machinery on her side
bhouston
> Not really true, Kamala outspent Trump 2:1 and had the media machinery on her side

Only if you exclude outside funding. Conservative SuperPACs were incredibly well funded compared to Liberal ones last election: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/super_pacs

And they were funded more than the official candidates themselves. Because then these groups can act without limits on their spending.

MangoCoffee (dead)
flatb
Liberalism is the core of American conservatism. That’s less true elsewhere.
throwawayqqq11
In that light, trump is no conservative at all and still, the GOP backs him. So are the republicans no conservatives either?

I bet a lot of trumps base considers themselfs conservative but look away from basically every inner political move trump made.

This is what confuses me about the "conservative core" your are speaking of. Where is it?

anthem2025
Trump is absolutely conservative.

Hes simply the logical conclusion of 50 years of republicans becoming increasingly extreme.

slipperydippery
Notably, this was basically never true of the modern, post-Nixon and post-authoritarian-christian-courting Republican voters.

They (and a lot of democratic voters!) were always skeptical of things like very-liberal trade policy. The gap between that long-running strain in the voters, and what the bipartisan neoliberal consensus on trade (and immigration, for all Republican politicians complained about it when campaigning) had looked like among nearly all Federal elected officials from the early '80s on, is exactly the kind of thing that Trump exploited to swiftly take over the entire party.

geodel
Agree. That's why no Canadian ever wants to come to US work, shopping or medical treatments. Commercialization of all aspects of life is horrible in USA.
smt88
This take is not based in reality. Despite issues with the US, net migration data shows that the US has been brain-draining Canada for most of the last 50 years.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025007/artic...

GuinansEyebrows
as a person who grew up in an american border town, i'm thinking the person you're responding to is being sarcastic. there were always a lot of canadian license plates on the roads and in parking lots where i grew up.
guywithahat
It doesn't, money has surprisingly little effect on competitive elections
myrmidon
What does "surprisingly little" mean to you? US election spending in 2024 was almost $2bn (mostly presidential election).

If media presence had surprisingly little effect on outcomes, then I would expect candidates to spend surprisingly little or be constantly outperformed by "underfunded" candidates-- neither of which is the case.

guywithahat
It's a game theory problem. There are lots of studies around executive performance, and what people find is that the specific executive/CEO has basically no impact, while things like general industry growth and direction is what matters (suggesting executive/CEO decisions are just a game of chance). But obviously I could also choose a bad executive who would tank the company. What's really happening is when everyone is trying their hardest, all of the executives are as good as they can be, and the things they do tend to look more like luck than performance.

It's the same thing in elections. Because everyone is competitive, who donates what money or it's amount tends to not really matter. If a candidate were to sabotage their campaign they would lose, but in a competitive election it doesn't end up being statistically significant.

notahacker
The old "half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I have no idea which half" quote springs to mind...

Not sure how you're defining "underfunded" candidates, but the incumbents in competitive races where enormous amounts are spent by both sides to try to gain an advantage don't win anywhere near as often as the incumbent in nom-competitive races which parties and PACs barely bother spending in. Ultimately the spending is positional and cancels out, and the biggest spender often loses because there's not nearly enough difference between the candidates' spending levels to affect whether voters hear their messages.

keiferski
This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial. We're talking about the lead office in the world's most dominant country, and the amount spent on the election is roughly equivalent to...the amount spent on ice cream or manga/comic books, per year.

There is a lot of money in America, and comparatively not that much is actually spent on the election. Maybe it's still too much in an ostensibly democratic system, but it's worth noting.

myrmidon
> This seems like a big number, but frankly in context it's actually quite trivial.

It's not really helpful that the number is tolerable in terms of national GDP: election spending being so large in terms of median wealth simply excludes lots of capable potential candidates that are not well positioned to raise money (for whatever reason).

It also leads to completely outsized pandering to "rich donor" interests, because those finance the largest share of the campaigns, which is an obvious problem if you want to call yourself "democracy" (instead of oligarchy or plutocracy).

keiferski
Yes, I didn’t say it was a good thing, I said it’s actually surprising that comparatively little money is spent on influencing the election. More money is spent on buying ice cream in a single year than on a once-every-four-years election.
notRobot
So then shouldn't be a problem to stop it entirely, right?
ch4s3
How do you stop people from running 3rd party ads in the US while not violating the 1sr amendment? You get into dicey territory quickly. The old overturned election laws were used in many cases to prevent books from being published in election years.
icandoit
>The old overturned election laws were used in many cases to prevent books from being published in election years.

Which laws and which books? I can't find anything.

guywithahat
No, because then the race wouldn't be competitive. It's a game theory problem, and it only holds true when both sides try their best. It's just that when both sides are trying their best, money doesn't seem to have a significant impact. It's why presidential races are often won by the candidate with less money (sometimes significantly less, like half the funding)
intermerda
If money has surprisingly little effect on competitive elections, why do candidates ask for it?
Perz1val
Yeah, cuz no matter who wins can be bought anyway... That's not good either
iancmceachern
Do you have a source?
MangoCoffee
just google kamala harris campaign fundraising vs trump. 2024 election just happened not too long ago. she got more money than trump and yet lose.

money is not the only factor.

thejazzman
elon poured a ton of money into strategic locations right at the end, such as running a fake lottery in PA. many attribute the outcome on the role he played.

may not be the most money, but it's the most effective use of money.

PA roads were littered with trump signs because of people being paid to litter our streets with them. for months.

people are, sadly, very easily influenced. companies wouldn't pour so much into advertising, in general, if it didn't have such an effective influence

prasadjoglekar
Reid Hoffman poured an equal amount of money thru Future Forward PAC on the Harris side.
guywithahat
For fun I did a non-scientific analysis of presidential candidates a while back, and found funding raised wasn't statistically significant https://thomashansen.xyz/blog/election-spending-isnt-statist...
digital_sawzall
Kamala raised $1.65 billion compared to Trump's $1.1 billion [0]. Not like it was a massive difference. Especially because that does not take into account super pacs, like Musks $200million in Pennsylvania.

[0] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2024-11-15/trump-har...

Probably what the money was spent on should be taken into account too.

Most campaigns stretch the truth a bit here and there, but from what I personally saw and from what I read from other states where the campaigning was more intense generally the Harris campaign did not stretch nearly as far as the Trump campaign.

I'd expect that this let the Tump campaign get more out of a given amount of spending than the Harris campaign could.

Chinjut
The election where the billionaire prominently campaigned for by the richest megabillionaire in the world won proves that money plays little role in politics.
myrmidon
Maybe, but Trump spent over half a billion on his 2024 campaign. Are you suggesting the outcome would have been unchanged had he spent a "sane" amount like $50M total? Because I don't think so.

Furthermore, in a country with somewhat free media you would always expect populist candidates to outperform with a given budget, because their platform is much better aligned with media interest; mass media does not want boring budget plans or quaint reforms-- rage-bait sells way better and nets populists tons of "free" online presence.

iancmceachern
Yeah but if you ask chatgpt:

"Absolutely, money does have a measurable impact on political outcomes"

https://www.investopedia.com/surprising-thing-billionaires-s...

https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/winning-vs-sp...

decremental (dead)
throwawaybob420
[flagged]
dang
Ok, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You may not owe whoever you're talking about any better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

throwawaybob420
What? lol what part of what I said is wrong dude. It’s the reality
dang
Commenters need to follow the rules here regardless of their views of reality.
throwawaybob420
Ok bud I’ll sanitize all my hackernews comments to ensure that it fits into the mindset of an automaton.
stale2002
Nobody is asking for special privileges. Instead, this is mostly to stop gatekeeper old school businesses from weaponizing the law against much better competitors that are powered via AI. It is to simply make sure everyone is allowed to compete to provide a better/cheaper product.
icandoit
AI would never be able to hijack the political process. AI Super-PACs dominating elections would be a clear milestone in the progression of the "gradual disempowerment" theory of loss of human control.

How could a person dedicated to their denial of the possibility of gradual disempowerment spin this as "good actually?" Am I reduced to "technological improvement is always good"? Or there some logically smaller step I can take?

itsdrewmiller
These are pro-AI PACs, not PACs run by AI.

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