A useful reminder that money in politics has a small effect

Many on the left are obsessed with stopping people being able to donate money to political campaigns. They do this, because then they can get their goal of taxpayer funded political parties.

But the US presidential election is a good reminder of the limited impact of money.

Harris raised US1.00 billion and Trump US$0.38 billion. So a US$600 million spending advantage and she still lost.

Of course money helps. Who doesn’t want to be able to spend more on advertising etc. But the impact on electoral outcomes is quite minor. The empirical data doesn’t back that it needs to be restricted.