Following the Outside Money

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/celinet/1429853058/">Celine Nadeau</a>

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In elections past, a good indicator of whether a candidate would win was to look at how much money they had raised: the more money, the better their chances. In this, the first post-Citizens United election, that equation may have been pushed aside by a new math. Now, what may matter more is how much money other people are spending to elect—or defeat—a candidate. As David Corn wrote earlier today, independent advocacy groups have poured nearly half a billion* dollars into this election—much of it raised behind closed doors from undisclosed donors. 

So, have the “dark money” groups and super PACs gotten their dollar’s worth? A quick sampling of election results suggests that they did. In most of the races below, the loser was the candidate who had the most independent money expended to defeat him/her; conversely, winners generally had more outside cash spent to elect them. We’ll keep looking at the data after the election results are final to see if this trend holds up. If it does, it’s proof that this election really did change the rules of the campaign finance game.

Kentucky Senate: Rand Paul (R) defeats Jack Conway (D)

West Virginia: Joe Manchin (D) defeats John Raese (R)

Connecticut Senate: Richard Blumenthal (D) defeats Linda McMahon (R)

 

Florida Senate: Marco Rubio (R) defeats Republican-turned-independent Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek (D)

Wisconsin Senate: Ron Johnson (R) defeats Sen. Russ Feingold (D)

California Senate: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) vs. Carly Fiorina (R)—neck and neck as of 10:30 PM PST. Does the money predict a Fiorina win? 

 

Data via Sunlight Foundation

 

* Correction: A previous version of this article reported “nearly half a trillion dollars.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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