There appears to have been some confusion in the comments section of the article I wrote, while I also felt compelled to write more information than I was able to fit in 15 column inches about campaign finance numbers, so here we go.
- To be more explicit than I was in my article, which the comments suggest I should have been: It has never been proven that raising money in ASUO elections leads to receiving more votes. That is merely the trend suggested by the results in relation to fundraising totals in the most recent election. Certain changes made to my article throughout the copy-editing process appear to have made this less clear, most specifically the insertion of a line break between the first two sentences, but equally, I can see how reading it could produce the impression I was suggesting otherwise, which is effectively the same as my having said otherwise, so let’s be explicit again: It is far from certain that raising more money absolutely gets you more votes.
- That is especially true with sums as relatively minuscule as the ones in this election. By all campaigns, a little less than 50 cents was spent per University of Oregon student in the primary. Less than $3 was spent per voter in the election. Put in those terms, the spending doesn’t seem that massive. Contrast that to the 2008 presidential election: just in 2007, the Democratic Party alone raised more than $1 per American and about $8 per voter in the actual primaries.
- The bulk of campaigns’ money was spent on t-shirts. More money probably equals more t-shirts as far as campaigns are concerned.
- The only ASUO election in recent memory where I don’t think it would be at all controversial to infer that money influenced victory was the 2008 election. Then, Sam Dotters-Katz reported fundraising of nearly $10,000, nearly triple what his opponent Kari Herinckx reported, and used that money to do things like sell students extremely cheap slices of pizza. That’s a campaign tactic nobody has had the budget for this year.
- Perhaps I’ll post more if the fancy strikes me later.