← Back to context

Comment by bobthepanda

5 years ago

Another, often overlooked part, is that competing in an American election requires very expensive media and outreach campaigns.

Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums for non-establishment parties. Bernie spent $230M in a primary.

To give a rough comparison, the UK limits spending per constituency, so the upper limit a party is allowed to spend in the UK is 19.5 GBP.

11 comments

bobthepanda

Reply
Stupulous  5 years ago

> Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B. These are formidable sums for non-establishment parties.

I was going to write a comment about how shocked I was that Trump outspending Clinton by a factor of 500 didn't see any media coverage, but it looks like that's supposed to be 680M.

chrisseaton  5 years ago

> Trump spent $680B

I think this is not true.

> the upper limit a party is allowed to spend in the UK is 19.5 GBP

I'm pretty sure they spend more than that, as well.

  • bobthepanda  5 years ago

    the B is a typo, should be M.

    > I'm pretty sure they spend more than that, as well.

    As per the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/election-2019-50170067

    > In the 2017 general election, 75 parties and 18 campaign groups reported spending more than £41.6m between them. The Conservatives spent most at £18.6m. It fielded 638 candidates, winning in 317 constituencies. Labour came in at £11m and the Liberal Democrats at £6.8m.

    • chrisseaton  5 years ago

      > As per the BBC

      The BBC figures are a million times larger than yours if you meant it as a total, and a hundred times smaller than yours if you meant it as per-capita.

      1 reply →

nickik  5 years ago

> Clinton spent $1.2B in 2016 and Trump spent $680B.

I'm not an expert but those numbers sound like total crap.