Scott Rasmussen's Number of the Day for May 1, 2017
The Number of the Day columns published on Ballotpedia reflect the views of the author.
May 1, 2017: All the campaign advertising by all federal candidates in Election 2016 cost $6.5 billion. Of that total, $2.4 billion was spent on presidential campaigns (including the primaries). The other $4 billion was spent on congressional races.[1]
While the raw dollar seems like a lot of money, it’s not really all that much when compared to corporate advertising budgets. Three brands each spent more money advertising their own products than the combined total of all the candidates—Pampers ($8.3 billion), Gillette ($8.3 billion), and L’Oreal ($8.2 billion).
If you look at the spending on the presidential campaigns alone, 20 brands each spent more than all the presidential candidates combined. That list includes Chevrolet, Louis Vuitton, Ford, Coca-Cola, Amazon, Sony, AT&T, Lexus, Toyota, Samsung, NIKE, Google, American Express, T-Mobile, Nissan, Verizon, and Chase.[2]
Even when you add in the value of all the free media coverage provided to President Trump and Secretary Clinton, several brands spent more promoting their products.
Another way of looking at it might be to consider the cost of winning control of a large corporation. Apple Inc. has a market value of roughly $750 billion. To gain absolute majority control would therefore cost about $375 billion. But, working with allies, a key investor might be able to gain effective control with as little as 5 percent or 10 percent of the total. That would still require something like $20 to $40 billion—three to six times the amount spent by federal candidates on Election 2016.
And, while it would cost far more to gain control of Apple Inc., the federal government takes in 15 times as much money as the giant corporation. Overall, campaign spending totaled less than 1/100th of 1 percent of federal spending for the two years before the next election.
Given this context, it’s worth considering why so many Americans have come to view campaign advertising as something akin to civic pollution. Despite the fact that Pampers, Gillette, and other brands spend more money on advertising, their commercials don’t attract the derision and vitriol that surrounds campaign advertising. Most likely, the answer has something to do with the difficulty in convincing voters that the campaign messages are as relevant as the consumer messages.
- April 28, 2017 90 percent of Internet publishing employees work in counties won by Hillary Clinton
- April 27, 2017 $184 billion: value of volunteer work in America
- April 26, 2017 519,000 elected officials in America, serving 87,576 governing bodies
- April 25, 2017 10 counties voted for losing presidential candidate in last three presidential elections
- April 24, 2017 62.6 million volunteers in the United states use their freedom to work together in community
- To see other recent numbers, check out the archive.
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