Prof. Cayce Myers
Professor and Director of Graduate Studies at Virginia Tech’s School of Communication. The author six books and numerous journal articles, Prof Myers is a regular commentator on U.S. elections in the media. His expertise includes campaign finance, political campaigns, media law, and political public relations.
Email: mcmyers@vt.edu
U.S. Election 2024
36. The tilted playing field, and a bygone conclusion (Dr David Karpf)
37. Looking forwards and looking back: Competing visions of America in the 2024 presidential campaign (Prof John Rennie Short)
38. Brat went splat: Or the emotional sticky brand won again (Prof Ken Cosgrove)
39. Election 2024: Does money matter anymore? (Prof Cayce Myers)
40. Advertising trends in the 2024 presidential race (Prof Travis N. Ridout, Prof Michael M. Franz, Prof Erika Franklin Fowler)
41. Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024 (Sean Whyard, Dr Joshua P. Darr)
42. Kamala Harris: Idealisation and persecution (Dr Amy Tatum)
43. Kamala Harris campaign failed to keep Democratic social coalition together (Prof Anup Kumar)
44. Revisiting Indian-American identity in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Madhavi Reddi)
45. Harris missed an opportunity to sway swing voters by not morally reframing her message (Prof John H. Parmelee)
46. In pursuit of the true populist at the dawn of America’s golden age (Dr Carl Senior)
47. Language and the floor in the 2024 Harris vs Trump televised presidential debate (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
48. Nullifying the noise of a racialized claim: Nonverbal communication and the 2024 Harris-Trump debate (Prof Erik P. Bucy)
49. A pseudo-scientific revolution? The puzzling relationship between science deference and denial (Dr Matt Motta)
50. Amidst recent lows for women congressional candidates, women at the state level thrive (Dr Jordan Butcher)
U.S. elections are unique in many ways, perhaps most unique in their cost. Unlike many other Western democracies, U.S. politicians are not only expected to have resonance with voters, but they are also expected to have the ability to raise vast sums of money to support their candidacy. Good candidates are good fundraisers, and winners are thought be exceptional. It should be no surprise that the cost of campaigning for the presidency now costs over a billion dollars, with the aggregate cost of all 2024 over $16 billion. Among presidential candidates, the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, clearly had the money advantage. Harris’s campaign receipts through October 16th showed just shy of $1 billion with the campaign spending just over $868 million (the next filing is due December 5th). In the first 16 days of October, her campaign raised over $97 million. Her operating expenditures during that time was just over $163 million. These numbers don’t include what she raised or spent in the final weeks of the election, which was substantial.
Yet Harris lost. She lost the Electoral College with Trump receiving 312 Electoral votes. Trump also became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years receiving over 74 million votes. Trump performed well with many segments of the voting population improving his margins from his 2020 race. That begs the question: Does money matter in politics anymore?
The answer to that question is complex. Yes, money matters as it always has. There’s an entry price to participate in the political arena, and the price goes up proportional to the office. The presidency is now a billion plus dollar endeavor. However, once a candidate is there, they must be able to have the right messaging, campaign organization, and resonance with voters to win. If money were the sole predictor of electoral victory Hillary Clinton would have won the presidential election in 2016, and Mike Bloomberg would have been the Democratic nominee in 2020.
What the presidential election in 2024 illustrates is that sometimes a candidate can do more with less, particularly if they are willing to continually engage with the media and have a message that resonates with voters. Trump’s campaign benefitted from the MAGA movement’s utilization of rallies and social media, notably Twitter, in 2016. In 2024 they made use of the podcast, which now has an outsized popularity in American media, as well as less expensive campaign methods of rallies, legacy media interviews, and a barrage of text messages.
It is important to note, however, we are not in an era where money no longer is a factor. Money does matter–a lot. After all, it was donor concern that led to President Joe Biden stepping out of the race. The resonance of actor George Clooney’s open letter to Biden in the New York Times was, in part, due to Clooney’s status as a Democratic fundraiser connected to other influential Democratic fundraisers. In fact, his concerns over Biden’s ability to run were rooted in his interaction with the President at a fundraising event. The larger concern of Biden continuing in the race was that his candidacy was causing him and other Democrats to underperform in fundraising. Once Harris assumed the mantle as the presumptive nominee, the campaign coffers began to refill with much needed cash. Biden’s departure and Harris’s candidacy likely contributed to the Democrats winning more races than they might have otherwise, partly because these changes enabled them to fund and run more competitive campaigns.
Trump was also not running a shoestring campaign. According to the FEC, his total receipts as of October 16th exceeded $381 million, $192 million of which were from donors giving less than $200. From October 1st through 16th his total receipts exceeded $162 million, and his operating expenditures were just under $100 million. Trump also benefitted from the largesse of multi-billionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC, which helped both Trump and Republicans during the election through canvassing efforts propelling voters to the polls (not to mention his work as a Trump surrogate in the media and on his platform X).
The post-mortem of the 2024 election and Harris’s defeat will not be a discussion of finances but of other political issues such as the choice of Tim Walz as Vice President, the lack of an open Democratic primary, Harris’s inability to distance herself from an unpopular President, and her overall campaign message strategy against Trump. The 2024 election underscores the truth of the late California politician Jesse Unruh’s famous observation that “money is the mother’s milk of politics,” though with important caveats. The issues can eclipse even the deepest war chests, and the resonance of a campaign message has more to do with voter perception than a candidate’s donors. The 2024 election proves that U.S. elections are still uniquely costly, setting a new record as the most expensive—until 2028.