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.
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.
Advertising is very expensive and political candidates have to pay retail rates. As the old adage goes, half of it is wasted but you don't know which half. However with political ads, all of the money spent on the losing candidate is wasted in a certain sense.
As media has fragmented, you really have to spend a lot to get in front of enough high propensity voters, and even more to turn out low propensity voters unless you're organically good at getting invited on to podcasts.
I wonder how much of the money goes to well connected ad agencies and consultants. I bet a lot. The whole system is corrupt all the way through.
Consulting around elections is a huge business, and consultants that win races cost millions, but that can't be paid for by PACs at all because they work with the campaign directly.
Buy ad buyers and media agencies that only work in politics are definitely a thing[1] also.
[1] https://oaaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20.06.30-Politic... (this is an old list but illustrative)
> 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
IMHO, this is the problem with trying to regulate elections in the US. Elections have always been intended to be controlled by the wealthy. This is nothing new. So, in the unlikely event that Congress does add regulations that neuter Super-PACs, and the less-likely event that the Courts uphold the regulations, well, they'll just come up with a new way to fund the desired outcome. They'll call it Super-Duper-PACs or Turbo-PACs or some shit like that.
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race