Strano, in genere il dibattito tra gli osservatori smaliziati è del tipo “come mai i soldi pesano tanto poco sull’ esito delle elezioni?”, e questo senza negare che esiste una “narrativa progressista” per cui “i soldi hanno ormai ucciso la democrazia”.
In una meta-analisi diventata un classico si conclude:
we argue that campaign contributions are not a form of policy-buying, but are rather a form of political participation and consumption. We summarize the data on campaign spending, and show through our descriptive statistics and our econometric analysis that individuals, not special interests, are the main source of campaign contributions. Moreover, we demonstrate that campaign giving is a normal good, dependent upon income, and campaign contributions as a percent of GDP have not risen appreciably in over 100 years – if anything, they have probably fallen. We then show that only one in four studies from the previous literature support the popular notion that contributions buy legislators’ votes. Finally, we illustrate that when one controls for unobserved constituent and legislator effects, there is little relationship between money and legislator votes. Thus, the question is not why there is so little money [in] politics, but rather why organized interests give at all. We conclude by offering potential answers to this question.
Certo, come già trapela dalle conclusioni di cui sopra, esistono studi che arrivano a conclusioni differenti, sono materie in cui ha senso solo mediare tra molti studi condotti con approcci differenti.
Lo studio di Alan Gerber su casi concreti, per esempio, conclude che forse c’ è una piccola incidenza per lo sfidante, molto meno per il presidente in carica.
La versione breve: troppi miliardari hanno perso troppi soldi perché sia credibile che la politica si compri con quelli.
Già nel 1995 molte analisi concludevano:
It seems unlikely that campaign finance reform, at least in its current guise, will have much impact on the functioning of the American political system...In the light of that conclusion, the substantial amount of energy devoted to the topic by the public, the media, and politicians might be more productively channeled towards other issues.
Conclusione che nella sostanza è ribadita nel 2012 dalla Sunlight Foundation:
2/3 of outside cash was spent on losers
Qui altri links per coprire la tematica e confermare la tesi principale.
