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Surely it can tip tight races and there also must be a floor or a minimum amount one needs to run a campaign at all. It might not be THE factor but it is A factor for sure. If no one hears your message then it doesn't matter how good it is.
I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that there is a sharply diminishing marginal effect in terms of electoral outcomes, and the practical impact gets maxed out quickly. It's easy to point out examples where massive spending achieved approximately nothing (Michael Bloomberg, Carrick Flynn, etc).
But even so, there can still be a corruptive effect if politicians believe that money buys elections, and most of them do.
I think the world has changed. Money in politics had more influence 2 decades ago because the media landscape was controlled by tv which costs money for ads.
I think most politicians have begun to realize this. The new reality is influencers on social media can level any money edge. Ad spending has close to zero effect on me. What people talk about on twitter does affect me.
Money does seem to be beneficial for the ground game part of elections. Zuckbucks probably did flip Wisconsin. Still that took a lot of money. This election will have Musksbucks on the other side and Zuckerberg hasn’t backed Trump but has recently said he admires him.
For ground game to matter you probably need to be close enough already. Though I might even be underestimate long term ground game. Cali is locked in left because of the Dems infrastructure and Jeb Bush really started turning Florida red with infrastructure. Those things are one part competency and one part money. Once built out they largely self-fund.
I would be interested on how close to the line Zuckbucks are since they are not exactly speech but funding supposedly neutral ground game.
The best example I can think of off the top of my head of money winning election is in the Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania 2014 gubernatorial election. Tom Wolf was a businessman from York who had briefly served as state treasurer several years prior, not exactly a guy with strong name recognition. But he declared early and bombarded the state with TV ads before most of the field even had their campaign apparatus together. He had such a commanding lead, with the remainder split among several candidates, that he was able to start attacking Corbett directly weeks before the election. Granted, that was his own money and not PAC money, and the field was relatively weak, but it shouldn't have been that much of a cakewalk for a guy who had virtually no public profile before that.
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I hear that, but you do know those names, without massive stacks they would never even have been in the conversation.
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