GuangzhiSun
commented
6 years ago Where does the money come from?
A political action committee(PAC) is a group formed for the purpose of contributing money to the campaigns of federal politicians. A political action committee can spend money on electing or on defeating a candidate. In the United States, an organization becomes a political action committee when it is registered with the Federal Election Commission, and at the same time, it needs to spend more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election.
There are three types of political action committees: connected political action committees, non-connected political action committees, and independent expenditure only committees.
Connected committees are created and operated by either a corporation, labour union, trade association or another membership organization. Connected political action committees receive money from individuals associated with the organizing or sponsoring entity of the PAC. Examples of connected committees are National Beer Wholesalers Association PAC, Realtors Political Action Committee.
Non-connected committees are not created by or connected to a corporation, labor union, trade association or other membership organization. They accept contribution from general public. Examples of connected committees are the Constitutional Rights PAC, National Right to Life PAC.
Independent-expenditure only committees, or Super PACs, are not traditional PACs and have only been legal since 2010. These committees make no contributions to candidates or parties. They do, however make independent expenditures in federal races - running ads or sending mail or communicating in other ways with messages that specifically advocate the election or defeat of a specific candidate. There are no limits or restrictions on the sources of funds that may be used for these expenditures.
Our group endeavored to illustrate donation preference of political action committees via creating figures similar to the figure above. Unfortunately, after several trial and errors, we found the creation of this graph beyond our capability.
Political candidates usually declare that money does not matter, yet the opposite is true. The influence of money in politics huge.
In this mini-project, there are several ideas to be explored. We want to create a chart aiming to find that a party that out-fundraised its opponent is more likely to win elections. In other words, winning candidates outspent their opponents.
Theoretically, there are a variety of reasons for why the better-financed candidates are more likely to win. Incumbency is a big reason. Specifically, those who have won elections in the past begin any race with the advantage of having already-built fundraising networks. Plus, in many cases, the candidates who win the most votes do so base on the same electability, popularity and qualifications that make them the best at fundraising.
All that said, it pays off to be the better-financed.