Money

[undercrypt]

As I predicted generally in January and more specifically in September, the presidential candidate with the biggest campaign budget won.

The current total numbers from Open SecretsObama: $639,174,281

Comments

[iamsquid]

I would postulate that it's not about how much money is spent on the campaign but how well the candidate (or perhaps their spin doctors) can play the media. See (Jack) Kennedy, Reagan, and (Bill) Clinton. Obviously a larger budget would help facilitate this.

[starlancer]

Well, I don't know why it doesn't get more press, but I'm not sure it's a bad thing. Nor is it necessarily free from a certain post hoc reasoning. Perhaps the candidate with the most support, and thus likely to get the most votes, also collects the most contributions. This is especially true now that the Internet in particular makes it cheap and easy to reach out to vast hordes of smaller contributors. So did Obama win because he had the most money, or did he collect the most contributions because he had the most support, and thus was likely to get the most votes? Does it really matter?

Chicken and egg

[sophia_sadek]

The turnout for Obama may have been the result of slick advertising. On the other hand, the campaign contributions may have been an indicator of Obama's support. Most of the people I know who voted for Obama had decided to do so before the Democratic primary. Some decided shortly after. In my neck of the woods, the money spent on his campaign was not a deciding factor.

[undercrypt]

Right, not saying that the money is causal, only that there seems to be a pretty strong correlation.

[asicath]

There is also the issue that people stop giving money to losing campaigns. Couple this with the fact that most of the money is spent in the tail end of the race.

Also I don't think that the media likes to remind the people of how easily swayed they are by lots of fancy ads.