[lasereye]

The story of this election was mainly money IMO. Of course there were other reasons, like GOP-e types undermining conservative Republicans, weak candidates in some races etc. But if you get outspent 3-1 like Dave Brat, it's very tough to overcome. It's even harder when you're outspent 15-1. I don't know what the Republican party can do to prevent a repeat in two years.

[Paladin2]

Billion$ to get Sessions fired?

You betcha.....

[a fool in paradise]

Obama gave out TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, the Democrats have deep war chests.

[HarleyD]

I suspect the Democrats and their special interest groups and movie stars spent a lot more than $800+ millions.

[mainerforglobalwarming]

The democrats spent at least 300,000 on Maine senate race 20. About 18,000 voters.
It was won in landslides the last two times by the republican. This time the dem won by 1 point. Money does make a difference.

[Drew68]

Democrats spent the most trying to ensure a victory in the House.

Allowing us to keep the Senate...

[deport]

Midterm elections: Were the billions spent worth it?

**************

Maybe economy will prosper for a while...........

[George from New England]

This is the media’s wet dreams come true. The recipient of the billions spent IS the media. They are rolling in the dough like never before.

[Ransomed]

Billions spent to sway the swayable % of eligible voters into voting one way or the other. Pretty horrific when you think about it. They must do it because it works I guess, supposedly around 10% of voters are swing voters. A lot of the time the margin of victory is less than 10%.

Freegards

[Crucial]

Democrats were already insanely angry, bitter and motivated. I think they would have won the House regardless. They probably didn’t get a very good return on their money.

[novemberslady]

What I'd really like to know is if Paul Ryan got money to help fund races for the Republicans.

If he did-How much was it and what was it spent on?

[euram]

Just think of all the money shoveled into democrat coffers. That wasn’t all, far from it, how much free campaigning was done by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NYT, WaPo, and all the local papers?

[Retvet]

How many citizens health care could the Democrats spending have funded? Seems they are more interested in power than health care!

[Pollster1]

Special interests spent $5B this year to influence how corrupt insiders in office spend $5T of our tax dollars each year. I’d call that a great investment - if you ignore the gigantic ethical issue of stealing from the taxpayers.

[Hildy]

Its so ironic that you would say that. When David Brat Beat Eric Cantor he was outspent 40 to 1. Here are some highlights:

Brat raised $206,000 through May 21, and at least an additional $16,600 after that, while Cantor raised $5.1 million, and another $298,000 just since May 21.

The majority leader brought in $2.1 million from PACs. Not a single PAC gave to Brat’s effort.

Cantor had hundreds of donors who maxed out their donations to him — $2,600 for the primary race — while Brat had 12 donors who gave the maximum amount, one of whom is a family member.

Cantor received just 21 percent of his campaign cash from Virginia residents, according to OpenSecrets’ latest analysis, which covers large individual donations (over $200) from 2013. Brat didn’t even raise money in 2013, but in 2014, 81 percent of the money from his large individual donors came from Virginia residents.

Cantor raised at least as much from donors living in D.C. ($193,000 in 2013 alone) as Brat raised overall. The challenger received just $50 from the District.

[Republicanprofessor]

Who gets this money? Most of it goes to the media, right?