How Much Did Each Vote Cost?

Without a doubt, 2016 will go down as one of the most unique and surprising elections in American history. With the votes now counted, we can start to ask the question, how much did each candidate pay for your vote?

(NOTE: the final financial reports won't be available until Jan. 31, 2017. As such, the figures for the 2016 election only represent what is known at this time, and the final amounts raised by each campaign will end up being higher. However, I don't foresee the proportion of cost-per-vote between candidates to vary much beyond what it already is.)

The billionaire won the election against a well entrenched establishment candidate, and both of them struggled to gain a few percentages over one another in scattered states while two lesser known candidates vied for the nation's top job as well. But before we look at the results of 2016, let's review the previous two election cycles.

In 2008, you had veteran politician (and military veteran) Republican Sen. John McCain go up against a relative new comer, Sen. Barack Obama. For the entire 2008 cycle, $1,681,000,000 was raised. The Democratic Party raised a little over $1 billion of that, while the Republican raised $606 million. In terms of the two nominees, Obama out-raised McCain, $748 million to $351 million.

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This means that Obama spent $10.76 per vote and McCain spent $5.85 per vote. Overall, 32.5% of all funds came from donations of $200 or less. The top bracket of donations made up 22.2%.

The 2012 election was less expensive, with $1,325,000,000 raised. Once again, the Republican Party nominee was out-raised, $772 million to Romney's $450 million. The Libertarian and Green parties also raised millions. The Libertarian Party's candidate, Gary Johnson, raised $2.8 million and Jill Stein of the Green Party raised $1.2 million. Overall, 46.8% of all funds came from donations of $200 or less. The top bracket of donations made up 26%.

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In terms of $ per vote: Obama spent $11.71/vote, Romney spent $7.38/vote, Johnson spent $2.19/vote, and Stein spent $2.55/vote.

This brings us to 2016.

2016 was the year of money, with both main candidates having a net worth of over $200 million for the first time in American history. This year's election was supposed to be the most expensive ever, with over $2 billion raised through direct campaign and party channels. The reality was a bit different. While there were countless millions (some say billions) worth of "free media" spent on Hillary and Trump (in terms of covering their full speeches, campaign stops etc.), the real figure will likely never be known. What is known is what the law requires. According to the FEC, $1.3 billion was raised by all candidates by the end of the October reporting quarter. (Remember, the total amounts won't be released until 2017)

Hillary Clinton raised $498 million, while billionaire Donald Trump raised $248 million (of that, $56 million came from Trump himself). Gary Johnson raised $11.2 million (the most for a 3rd party candidate since Ross Perot in 1992) and Jill Stein raised $3.5 million. Overall, 55.4% of all funds came from donations of $200 or less. The top bracket of donations made up 23%.

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The cost-per-votes are: $7.97 for Clinton, $4.04 for Trump, $2.61 for Johnson, and $2.67 for Stein. 

I also want to look at the primaries. Clinton raised $328.6 million by the end of July while Bernie Sanders raised $236.5 million. Clinton received 16.9 million primary votes, Sanders 13.2 million. This equals $19.44/vote for Hillary and $17.91/vote for Sanders.

On the Republican side, Trump's main rival was Sen. Ted Cruz. By the end of July, Trump had raised $128 million and Cruz raised $92.8 million. Trump won slightly over 14 million votes for a cost-per-vote of $9.14, and Cruz had a cost of $11.98/vote with 7.8 million votes.

This election had a turnout rate of 53.6% which was the lowest voter turnout since the 2000 Bush/Gore election (which also resulted in the winner losing the popular vote). In terms of overall vote count, it's similar to the 2004 election of Bush/Kerry.

What does all of this mean? Simply spending huge sums of money is no guarantee of winning an election. I think it definitely goes a long way towards dispelling the notion that you can "buy" a place in the Oval Office.

--Jacob Bogle, Nov. 16, 2016
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When is Democracy Not Democracy?

The ongoing battle within the Republican Party for the 2016 presidential nomination is the most recent exemplifier of this question, but I have been thinking about it since President Obama’s 2012 victory. The question itself has been around for ages. 

--At what point is an election’s outcome a legitimate expression of the people’s will? In other words, can a winner who has received less than 50% of the vote, but still more than the other candidates, really be considered the valid winner?--

The United States is a republic which basically means we have a constitution (rule of law) that protects the rights of all, even the rights of a single individual, from the whims of the majority. It helps to keep our nation stable and largely defends us from mob rule. But when it comes to electing the president, the people have no real legal guarantee to vote. All the Constitution says is that the president is the person who gains the majority of electoral college votes and that each state appoints electors to serve that function; it doesn’t say how a candidate might receive said votes.

Logically the best method would be to apportion the Electoral College in a certain way that is then tied to the direct voting of the people. In my state of Tennessee there are 11 Electoral College votes, so if the majority of voters pick candidate A, he/she would get those 11 votes. 

From 1828 onward, the average voter turnout in the US stayed in the 70-80% range until the 1896 election, from there it plummeted to a mere 48.9% in 1924. After that, things went back up to the 60 percentage range, and have now fallen – but stabilized – to the 50s ever since 1972 (with one exception, 49% in 1996).

In the US, there have been four elections, 1824, 1920, 1924, and 1996, where the turnout was under 50%. And while having a low turnout is never good, winning with a minority of votes is even worse. There have been 18 elections where the “winner” received less than 50% of the popular vote. John Q. Adams got the lowest amount, 30.92%, and Lincoln the second lowest at 39.65%. The most recent example was G. W. Bush in 2000 and he joined three other presidents to not only win with less than 50%, but to actually win by coming in 2nd in terms of the popular vote.

So far I have focused on voter turnout and votes cast. But what about looking at things in terms of how many adult citizens voted? In 2012, voter turnout was 54.9%, and Obama won 51.1% of the vote, but that also means that only about 30% of eligible voters voted for the winner. Thirty percent got to decide what the other 70% had to live with.

Certainly the obvious solution is to increase voter turnout, but it also raises other questions. Before I get to those, I quickly want to look at local elections.

Local elections tend to have an even smaller turnout despite the fact that what goes on at the local level has a greater impact on the lives of citizens than just about anything that could occur at the national level. 

Using my state of Tennessee again, our most recent gubernatorial election had a turnout of approx. 25% - meaning Gov. Bill Haslam won with only the support of 17.5% of the adult population. Even worse, in my city of Murfreesboro, only 11.32% of registered voters actually voted. That means the mayor won 7.7% of registered voters, or roughly 5% of the adult population. FIVE PERCENT.

Some countries have an election threshold. So long as the “winner” (either a party or individual candidate) hits that threshold, then the election is valid and they actually win. In some multi-candidate contests, if a candidate fails to reach 50% (for example), then the top two candidates will go to a “run-off” election. But the rules vary widely across the world and even in the US. And within America there is no uniformity, with many states and municipalities lacking any kind of real threshold. 

Taking part in the election process is everyone’s right and that includes the right to not exercise one’s ability to vote. But when someone can win while being rejected by a large majority (such as the case of Trump), or when you win simply because most people didn’t show up to vote (like Tennessee’s governor), it really calls into question the legitimacy of the whole system.

President Obama had no election mandate just because he “won” a second time – he only won 30% of eligible voters. I fully recognize that in a multi-party system it would be extremely difficult for anyone to win a true majority of all eligible voters (turnout will never equal 100%), but the idea that the winner wins with fewer than 30% of the vote, or just 5%, appalls me – and it opens wide the door to corruption and everything bad in politics. 

Low turnout favors the “good ole boy” system, it favors big money, the politically well connected, and it can effectively cut entire communities out of the process – thus deepening whatever divides (racial or otherwise) that may already exist. And then there’s the extreme cases where little known nut jobs win 40% of the popular vote and go on to invade Poland. Or you have a staunch anti-gay candidate win the Democratic nomination, as happened in Tennessee’s 2012 senatorial race, by getting 30%.

Making voting compulsory doesn’t necessarily solve the problem and it opens up a whole other debate about the meaning of freedom (including the freedom to not do something). There are several additional complex and equally important debates within the concept of compulsory voting too. In the end people have the right to not participate, but I don’t think anyone would agree that allowing 10% of the population to determine who will lead everyone is a good thing either.

Given the importance of having a representative government and the potentially grave repercussions of allowing a minority to decide for the majority (even if that choice is based on silent acquiescence), I feel it’s very important to bring up this topic as our own election process is heating up and to have this conversation.

--Jacob Bogle, 4/2/2016

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