A few things stand out here:
- Obama trumped Romney in individual campaign contributions $556M to $340M, but Romney lapped Obama with three times the Super PAC money.
- Romney's biggest state
for campaign contributions was California,
a state he had no chance of winning.
- Two-thirds of Obama’s
contributions came from small donors (< $200) while Romney’s largest
contributor group was large donors ($2000+).
- The vaunted Obama
“ground game” was 18% of his campaign’s overall spending (payroll and
administration, for a total of $135.8M), double the spending of the Romney
campaign’s 10% of spending ($63.9M).
- The combined campaigns
spent $2.85 for every man, woman, and child (U.S. population 314,785,298
Americans as per Census.gov
November 18, 2012). Add in the
super PACs, and total election spending grows to $4.58 per American. Just get me
a gallon of gas if you're trying to buy my vote.
- Lincoln’s campaign is the closest thing we've seen to
sensible campaign finance spending. It’s time we brought that back (keep the stovepipe hat, though).
