Presidential Campaign Spending

In the 2008 election, the two presidential candidates spent a total of $1.7 billion on their campaigns -- marking the first time in U.S. history that the major party candidates had spent more than a billion dollars. In the 2004 campaign, candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush had spent only $646.7 million combined. It had been predicted that the 2012 campaign spending would break the record set in 2008, and it looks like that will probably happen. Here are some figures for spending this year (from January through September of 2012), provided by the Federal Election Commission:

BARACK OBAMA

Obama Campaign...............$470 million
Democratic National Committee...............$255 million
Obama super-PACs...............$53.7 million

Total Spending...............$778.7 million

WILLARD MITT ROMNEY

Romney campaign...............$298 million
Republican National Committee...............$249 million
Romney super-PACs...............$156.5 million

Total Spending...............$703.5 million

TOTAL COMBINED SPENDING...............$1.4822 billion

Those are some pretty incredible numbers -- especially when you consider that it doesn't include any spending for the month of October (when both candidates will probably spend more than in any other month, trying to close the deal with undecided voters). I think that by the end of November, the total will probably easily eclipse the amount spent in 2008.

The only surprise in all of this spending is that Barack Obama has been able to match the spending of the Republican candidate. Many Democrats had feared that super-PAC spending (which so far has favored the Republicans by a 3 to 1 margin) would allow the Republicans to easily outspend the president. But the enormous amount of donations flowing into the president's campaign (where a record number of donors gave money) has allowed him to remain competitive in campaign spending.

Here are some other figures on the combined spending:

Monthly Spending...............$164,688,889

Daily Spending...............$5,489,629

Spending Per Minute...............$3,812

Spending Per Second...............$63.53

Spending per registered voter (2012)...............$10.13

Spending per registered voter (2000)...............$6.92

Spending per registered voter (1980)...............$5.03

NOTE -- The "spending per registered voter" figures for 1980 and 2000 are for the whole campaign. The 2012 figure is only through September, and will undoubtably rise above $10.13 per voter once October spending is added in to the total.)