Political Spending

[BBsq69]

Some of the figures mentioned in the US Mid-Terms are frightening.

Just to compare at the last UK General Election, the parties spent less than $52million. Weren't some of the House seats spending almost as much.

It's surely an enormous waste of money. Is there any way of controlling this?

[Thestarider]

The U.S. is on the cusp of its costliest congressional election ever, according to the Center for Responsive Politics: Candidates and their supporters in political parties, committees and other groups are on track to spend over $5 billion this cycle. As Election Day approaches, incumbents on both sides of the aisle are frantically attempting to save their Senate seats — and it’s proving to be an expensive endeavor.

Running for Senate isn’t cheap in the first place — in 2014, the average victorious Senate campaign spent $10.6 million, according to the center — but there are a few factors that influence spending.

http://time.com/money/5433858/all-the-senators-running-for-reelection-in-the-2018-midterms-ranked-by-how-much-theyre-spending-to-keep-their-jobs/

[BBsq69]

I know a lot of people are against this because they say it wastes public money but I think there should be central government funding based on polling so 2 equivalent parties get the same funding. They can then spend it as they choose provided it is audited. This would only be for an election period. At the moment it seems fairly arbitrary whether the left or right has the most money. Judging by that article, Thestarider the Democrats were outspending the Republicans significantly when it came to Senate seats but then it also showed outrageous spending by Jeb Bush in a failed primary campaign.
The US is quite a lot different from other countries in the sheer time spent campaigning but I don't suppose there is any way of controlling that.

Another thing no-one can do anything about is media. In the UK we have a very strong press bias towards the right, whereas it seems that there is press bias towards the left. It is obvious where Fox News sympathies lie but are they also outnumbered. The BBC gets accused of bias by both sides so balance is a tough tightrope to walk.