‘There’s Nothing Better Than a Scared, Rich Candidate’

The Atlantic ^ | OCTOBER 2016 ISSUE | Molly Ball

[Jeff Chandler]

[snip]

At the presidential level, Hillary Clinton’s push for the Democratic nomination was nearly derailed by a candidate whose campaign manager was a comic-book-store owner with no experience in elections outside of Vermont. And while Clinton’s staff-heavy operation ultimately prevailed, her worst showings came in caucuses—the sort of contests where on-the-ground organizing is supposed to make the biggest difference. Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, is a field-organizing specialist.

On the Republican side, the most expensive and professional presidential campaigns proved remarkably ineffective. Ted Cruz’s campaign paid almost $6 million to a state-of-the-art analytics firm that touted its slicing and dicing of the electorate based on personality profiles. Marco Rubio’s campaign and super pac spent $105 million; Ben Carson’s spent $78 million. Most notoriously, Jeb Bush, between his campaign and his super pac, employed a flotilla of the best-credentialed consultants in Republican politics, burned through $139 million of his donors’ money—and dropped out after just three primaries, having won four delegates and as little as 3 percent of the vote in the states where he competed.

[Jeff Chandler]

[Jeff Chandler]

[snip]
What about other campaign tactics? The data revolution of the past two decades has shown staples of the old consultant repertoire to be ineffective—for example, targeting your strongest precincts for get-out-the-vote efforts tends to reach people who were going to vote for your candidate anyway, and can backfire by inadvertently turning out voters for your opponent.

[Jeff Chandler]

[snip]
The one campaign tactic that’s consistently been found to be effective in turning out voters is field organizing—being present on the ground in a community and campaigning door-to-door. But the effects are small: For all the hype about Obama’s ground game in 2012, it likely netted him less than a point in the states where it was most active.

[Lurkinanloomin]

Next time around Yeb! can just give me the $34 million and I’ll be his delegate.

[dirtboy]

Even that graphic doesn’t tell the entire story. There were roughly twice as many Dem delegates as GOP delegates. So if the number of Dem delegates is reduced by half, Hillary spent four times as much per proportional delegate as Trump. And that doesn’t even factor in superdelegates.

[2ndDivisionVet]

No mention of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, of course.

[Voluntaryist]

Plus she was only running against one other person...

[ctdonath2]

The real action should be precincts right on the edge of urban areas.
Urban precincts vote D.
Rural precincts vote R.
Pour money into persuading the ones on the boundary, and you can sway enough voters to win more precincts.

[Vigilanteman]

Very interesting graphic.

When you run just the raw data, Hillary outspent Trump by $2.12 to $1. When you figure the lower value of the delegates (because the jack@$$ party seats nearly twice as many), then the true spending ratio is $4.08 to $1.

And that doesn't even count the gushing media coverage for her vs. the attack dogs on Trump.

[ri4dc]

$1,254,996,128 spent in primaries.
That’s a lot of OPM.

Which one mostly spent his own $$ ?
The winner.

Regarding this graphic,
I thought Trump ultimately got over 1700 delegates.
That would not change his position of least spent,
but it would lower the per delegate cost.

[onyx]

Extremely interesting article! Thanks for finding and posting it.

I learned a lot! For example, the fact that TV ads really don't have the impact we've been led to believe!

Donald Trump is truly brilliant. He knew that all these highly paid "campaign gurus" were basically "in it for their own enrichment and tied to the old ways" - i.e. yuge expenditures on ineffective marketing, ads and controlled messaging."

"Over and over in the conference sessions, the consultants talked about the importance of “authenticity.” How, they wondered, could this quality, which voters seemed to prize so highly, be manufactured?"

The irony seemed to escape them.

TRUMP the ONLY authentic CANDIDATE!

[Jeff Chandler]

What little effect TV ads have is short-lived.

[entropy12]

The Trump enthusiastic supporters I witnessed at a Rally last week, will walk through broken glass to go and vote. I have seen no such enthusiasm in Hillary supporters in any of the youtube video’s. Authenticity? Outsider candidate? Non-career-politician? Whatever is attracting voters to Trump is a new phenomenon.

[Rastus]

$139,013,631. That’s a lot of guac bowls. Please clap.

[Reverend Wright]

a brilliant comment on the Atlantic Article by "Troll_in_Training":

Wouldn't it be funny if after all the failed campaign finance reform attempts, what finally got the money out of politics was the realization that it's all being wasted.

[lafroste]

Atlantic may have a liberal slant, but it is refreshing that these articles are written by someone who actually knows how to write.

[Resettozero]

Could not find confirmation for my idea in this Atlantic article that DJT personally has spent significantly less than $49,891 per delegate. Super-PACs spent a large portion of this amount in his behalf.

[DoughtyOne]

Trump's vs Hillary's run for their party's nomination, money spent, delegats won, and the comparisons between them is merky because the parties don't have the same delegats on the line.  

For that reason I developed a spread sheet workup.  Here is what I found.

Delegates won

Trump won 1543 delegates of the 2472 his party had on the line.  That's 62.42%
Clinton won 2814 delegates of the 4763 her party had on the line.  That's 59.08%

Money spent

Hillary spent $297,063,196 dollars during her primary run
Trump spent $  76,982,033 dollars during his primary run

Trump spent 25.91% of the money Hillary did.
Hillary spent 385.89% of the money Trump did.

Remember

Trump ran against 16 other candidates
Hillary ran agaist 6 other candidates

Under these pressures, Trump should have had to spend much more than Hillary.

Comparative delegate Conversion

The Democrat candidates vie for 192.68% of the number of delegats the Republican candidates vie for.  The Democrats vie for 4763 delegates and the Republican vie for 2472 delegates.

Here's where it gets a bit confusing.  Hillary won 2814 delegates.  Trum won 1543 delegates.  On first blush that might cause folks to think Hillary was a much better and successful candidate.

Here's what I did to level the playing field.  Since the Democrats award 192.68% more delegates than the Republicans do, I divided the Democrat delegates by 1.9268.  This gave me an exact match  party to party delegates.

Then I used that same methodology to calculate the delegates Clinton won.  When you divide them by the same 1.9268 figure, you see that her comparative figure is 1460.47.

Trump won 1543, and she won 1460.47.

These two figures, the converted Democrat total delegtes and delegates awarded can now be compared easily.  The following comments will us these figures.

More stats now easily understood using the new converted numbers

Hillary won 94.65% of the delegates Trump won.  For Hillary to match Trump she would have to have increased her delegate count by 5.65%.

This outs the Federal Election Commission for presenting numbers that skew the full picture.

Not only did Clinton not win as high a percentage of her party's delegates as Trump did his, this obviously means Trump acutally won more delegates (compartively) than she did.

As for dollars spent per delegate, when you use the converted comparative numbers, Trump spent the $49,891.18 as the FEC stated, but Hillary's number comes in at a whopping $203,402.77 per delegate.

Ouch.

Hillary spent like a Democrat

Trump spent like a grade AAA Conservative

[DoughtyOne]

Folks might enjoy reading post 18 just above...

[Jim Robinson]

The consultants spending open-borders/common-core Bush money should be sued for malpractice.