Question 1: On net, how much did Super PACs matter?

Election Roundtable: Obama and Romney at End of the Road

by The Political Bloggers

Date posted: Monday, November 5, 2012

Editor’s note: At climactic moments during Election 2012, we gathered our political writers for roundtable discussions. This is the final one. Tomorrow we will update with predictions. (UPDATE: We now have predictions!)

Predictions

Anthony Resnick: I’m going to say President Obama takes both the popular vote (50-49) and the Electoral College (281-257). I’m pessimistic enough to give Romney the toss-ups in Colorado and Virginia, but optimistic enough to think that the president’s upper-Midwest firewall of Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin is going to hold.

Ben Hoffman: Obama wins the EC 440-98 and then forcibly implants microchips in us (hey, he’d have a mandate!). Oh wait, never mind, that was Jim Cramer’s Electoral College prediction, only slightly less insane than predictions that Obamacare includes microchip implants (I knew they should have read the bill before they passed it!). Other insane predictions: George Will and Michael Barone both say Romney will prevail by about 100 EC votes. Being a nervous wimpy superstitious liberal, I’m tempted to jump on that train in a desperate attempt at a reverse jinx, but I’ll make some honest predictions: Romney wins North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado. Obama takes Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia (which will be the closest state). Obama wins 294-244. Dems hold the Senate 53-47. Conservatives are angry/blame the hurricane.

Josh Lawson: Shock and awe.

Ian Cheney: See here.

Stephen Kurczy: For the first time in its history, Dixville Notch’s presidential picks end in a tie—five for Barack Obama, five for Mitt Romney—echoing what national polling has found: this election is too close to call.

Question 1: On net, how much did Super PACs matter?

Josh Lawson: Outside orgs spent just over $1.2B during this election cycle (all races), about half of which came from Super PACs. The other half came from unions, corporations, individuals, and the political parties. Why so much? Someone must think there is a solid return on investment to be gleaned from our exercise in American democracy (only Congress can blow a billion without thought to results). Those “returns” are not always financial—they can be ideological, and solid issue advocacy is about as democratic as democracy gets. Still, I’m one of those irked by ”return on investment” and “democracy” cropping up in the same sentence. I’m also among those for whom Citizens United was a dishearteningly naïve decision. So I try and keep a watchful eye on Super PACs.

But those who share my sentiments were probably surprised (in a great way) that the debates played such a central roll. In this era of trademarked letters—“O” and “R”—it is refreshing that many took advantage of the debates as a chance to size-up each candidate in real-time. Net effect of S-PAC money on the presidential race? There’s no way of knowing for certain until access/accountability orgs run some regressions based on Tuesday’s returns. My early sense is that outside spending was most effective at framing the issues covered by the candidates (to the exclusion of a great many others), less effective as a hit-machine, and least effective making a positive case for either candidate.

Anthony Resnick: This may be the result of being embedded in the solidly blue state of California, but I’d almost forgotten about the Super PACs. My sense is that they were much more important in the primaries, given how little money all the candidates but Romney had at that stage of the race. With Romney and Obama both able to raise ungodly sums of money themselves, there was little room for the Super PACs to control the narrative. Other than a weeklong story about whether Mitt Romney was being accused of murder, there was nothing in this cycle particularly impactful or memorable from the Super PACs, certainly nothing on the level of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Ian Cheney: Agreed on both answers. We can’t really know, but it’s probably not as much as we feared. Both candidates spent so much money, and the two camps were already so divisive, that S-PACs probably did more to rally a base than effectively tear down an opponent. In the primaries, where the differences between candidates were much more nuanced, all voters were of the same party, and there was less “honest” money in play, the S-PAC machines could spout their half-truths (perhaps overestimated) and have more of an impact the polls than they did in the flush general election.

Ben Hoffman: Pretty much what everyone said. Given that presidential candidates have the ability to raise insane sums of money, I wonder if Super PACs will have more of an effect on smaller races: Senate or House races where candidates’ campaign banks are much smaller and thus less able to counter the effects of outside money. See here.

Stephen Kurczy: I can’t believe what I’m hearing from you guys! Super PACs would like us to believe that their influence fell short of aims, as the Wall Street Journal has wrongly claimed. But their role cannot be understated when they spent $623 million in the 2012 election, nearly as much as all political parties and other groups combined. Here’s what Jane Meyer had to say about Super PACs: “A pool of only twenty-one hundred people has given a total of two hundred million dollars to the 2012 campaigns and their Super PACs—fifty-two million dollars more than the combined donations of the two and a half million voters who have given two hundred dollars or less. In other words, the top.07 percent of donors is exerting greater influence on the 2012 race than the bottom eighty-six per cent. And this accounts only for publicly disclosed donations: much of the money raised during this election cycle consists of secret gifts to “nonprofit public-welfare” groups that claim to have no overt political agenda.” One clear influence was in the primaries, when Super PAC money helped Romney fend off surges from Gingrich and Santorum. The only reason Super PACs may appear inconsequential now is because pro-Romney and pro-Obama groups nearly cancelled each other out. Going forward, you won’t be a contender without a billionaire in your back pocket, or pulling your strings.

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