My back of the envelope. Back back back, like maybe even outhouse of the envelope. It’s very hard to calculate marginal cost per vote, in part bc there’s sort of an efficient markets thing going on w donations in some cases and not others. A senate race in Wyoming costs roughly the same as one in California, because the seat is just as valuable, despite vastly different numbers of votes. But activists getting worked up about a race can change the numbers, and in solid blue states it seems you can win a House seat more cheaply than in swing states, where you have to win a primary and a general and the national partisan orgs dgaf about the primary.
:
Approx 10m voters who matter in a Presidential campaign (i.e. the relevant pop of swing states). Takes about a billion to win. Naively this would suggest $100/vote, but multiply by 10x to $1000 for the marginal vote (iirc there IS some fancy econometrics way to estimate marginal dollar’s impact better than this and I have seen it before; this is just dumdum math and I am dumdum).
Do these numbers hold up for campaigns at other levels? Gonna set aside the Flynn campaign bc freakishly large amounts were spent. Normal House primary, maybe 1m spent. Maybe 100k votes cast in a blue district? Idk; it varies widely. I got this estimate from Ayanna Pressley’s race, but it looks like in AOC’s race only 30k were case, and 63k in Chris Pappas’s primary race in a swing district. So, taking AOC as a sort of worst case, 30k votes cost 1m, ($33k each) assume the marginal vote is 10x that, it’s $330 each.
Or, thinking in terms of $ per election and ignoring numbers of votes, assuming 1m gets you a 50% chance of winning, $1=1/2m probability of winning election in a normal election.
But Flynn campaign cost more like $2000/vote (not marginal, avg) if reports of 8-figure SBF spend are to be believed. So under the same methodology this would imply ~20k per marginal vote.
Thanks for sharing! But I think this may be too BOTEC-y to be useful...
Takes about a billion to win.
This is too low by a couple orders of magnitude. The marginal dollar in a presidential election has much less than a one-in-a-billion chance of tipping the election.
More generally, I think it’s quite misleading to think in terms of buying votes. (In retrospect, Carrick wouldn’t have won even if he had $100M.)
“More generally, I think it’s quite misleading to think in terms of buying votes. (In retrospect, Carrick wouldn’t have won even if he had $100M.)”
I think people are confused about the difference between a PAC spending money, and Carrick’s campaign having money. Because of rules about donations and coordination, money given To Carrick’s campaign was far more helpful. Ad of the end of April, his campaign has raised just under $1m. That’s a lot, but Salinas, who won, had raised $600k by then, and 2 other candidates who lost had raised even more, or lent their campaign the money, which is allowed—so it’s not nearly the same outsized advantage as it seems when you talk about PAC spending.
I think people are confused about the difference between a PAC spending money, and Carrick’s campaign having money.
I agree, and you’re right that my comment could have been clearer. (Regardless, my point was that here and in other posts people are talking about ‘how much votes cost’ in an incautious manner, and e.g. the fact that there was much less pro-Salinas spending per Salinas vote than pro-Carrick spending per Carrick vote doesn’t mean that pro-Salinas spending was more effective.)
money given To Carrick’s campaign was far more helpful.
I’m curious how much more helpful you think it is; I would have thought <2x. The fact that campaigns sometimes spend money on basically the same thing PACs would—ads—seems to suggest that marginal campaign spending can’t be much more effective (or campaigns wouldn’t buy ads).
Also, no such thing as generic “too BOTEC-y to be useful.” If you have a more rigorous calculation offer it. Otherwise BOTEC is the best available estimate and you should show it more respect until you do have an alternative.
This is why I suggest the marginal dollar is only 1⁄10 as effective as the avg dollar. I don’t have any particular reason to think my est is off by an order of magnitude or more. If you do I’d like to hear it, and I suspect so would every campaign in the world.
Um, $5.7B was spent on the 2020 presidential election, and I have no idea where “Takes about a billion to win” comes from? Marginal spending doesn’t have much effect in presidential elections.
“Doesn’t have much effect” is too vague a statement to be meaningful. 1/1b increase in chance of winning is simultaneously “not much” and also enough to spend money on where the consequences are large enough.
My back of the envelope. Back back back, like maybe even outhouse of the envelope. It’s very hard to calculate marginal cost per vote, in part bc there’s sort of an efficient markets thing going on w donations in some cases and not others. A senate race in Wyoming costs roughly the same as one in California, because the seat is just as valuable, despite vastly different numbers of votes. But activists getting worked up about a race can change the numbers, and in solid blue states it seems you can win a House seat more cheaply than in swing states, where you have to win a primary and a general and the national partisan orgs dgaf about the primary.
:
Approx 10m voters who matter in a Presidential campaign (i.e. the relevant pop of swing states). Takes about a billion to win. Naively this would suggest $100/vote, but multiply by 10x to $1000 for the marginal vote (iirc there IS some fancy econometrics way to estimate marginal dollar’s impact better than this and I have seen it before; this is just dumdum math and I am dumdum).
Do these numbers hold up for campaigns at other levels? Gonna set aside the Flynn campaign bc freakishly large amounts were spent. Normal House primary, maybe 1m spent. Maybe 100k votes cast in a blue district? Idk; it varies widely. I got this estimate from Ayanna Pressley’s race, but it looks like in AOC’s race only 30k were case, and 63k in Chris Pappas’s primary race in a swing district. So, taking AOC as a sort of worst case, 30k votes cost 1m, ($33k each) assume the marginal vote is 10x that, it’s $330 each.
Or, thinking in terms of $ per election and ignoring numbers of votes, assuming 1m gets you a 50% chance of winning, $1=1/2m probability of winning election in a normal election.
But Flynn campaign cost more like $2000/vote (not marginal, avg) if reports of 8-figure SBF spend are to be believed. So under the same methodology this would imply ~20k per marginal vote.
Thanks for sharing! But I think this may be too BOTEC-y to be useful...
This is too low by a couple orders of magnitude. The marginal dollar in a presidential election has much less than a one-in-a-billion chance of tipping the election.
More generally, I think it’s quite misleading to think in terms of buying votes. (In retrospect, Carrick wouldn’t have won even if he had $100M.)
(And yes, Protect Our Future did spend $11M.)
“More generally, I think it’s quite misleading to think in terms of buying votes. (In retrospect, Carrick wouldn’t have won even if he had $100M.)”
I think people are confused about the difference between a PAC spending money, and Carrick’s campaign having money. Because of rules about donations and coordination, money given To Carrick’s campaign was far more helpful. Ad of the end of April, his campaign has raised just under $1m. That’s a lot, but Salinas, who won, had raised $600k by then, and 2 other candidates who lost had raised even more, or lent their campaign the money, which is allowed—so it’s not nearly the same outsized advantage as it seems when you talk about PAC spending.
I agree, and you’re right that my comment could have been clearer. (Regardless, my point was that here and in other posts people are talking about ‘how much votes cost’ in an incautious manner, and e.g. the fact that there was much less pro-Salinas spending per Salinas vote than pro-Carrick spending per Carrick vote doesn’t mean that pro-Salinas spending was more effective.)
I’m curious how much more helpful you think it is; I would have thought <2x. The fact that campaigns sometimes spend money on basically the same thing PACs would—ads—seems to suggest that marginal campaign spending can’t be much more effective (or campaigns wouldn’t buy ads).
Also, no such thing as generic “too BOTEC-y to be useful.” If you have a more rigorous calculation offer it. Otherwise BOTEC is the best available estimate and you should show it more respect until you do have an alternative.
This is why I suggest the marginal dollar is only 1⁄10 as effective as the avg dollar. I don’t have any particular reason to think my est is off by an order of magnitude or more. If you do I’d like to hear it, and I suspect so would every campaign in the world.
Um, $5.7B was spent on the 2020 presidential election, and I have no idea where “Takes about a billion to win” comes from? Marginal spending doesn’t have much effect in presidential elections.
Joe Biden raised 1.69 bn, Trump 1.96 b https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/858347477/money-tracker-how-much-trump-and-biden-have-raised-in-the-2020-election. Little more than I thought but not a whole OOM. Closer to 1b than 10b. Call it 2bn to win if u prefer.
“Doesn’t have much effect” is too vague a statement to be meaningful. 1/1b increase in chance of winning is simultaneously “not much” and also enough to spend money on where the consequences are large enough.