More Bad News for Dems: Total Total Total 2014 Spending Favored Them (Slightly)

If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending, but you tend to get articles like this that (for fairly good reasons) don’t give you totals, rather breaking it down into campaign/party-committee spending vs SuperPAcs vs 501-whatever “social welfare organizations.”

What’s the bottom line? (Caveats follow.)

Screen shot 2014-11-07 at 6.46.58 AM

The Dems show a slight advantage (in the Senate and overall), but not much beyond the margins of estimation. Given the difficulties of estimation, the two parties spent about the same amounts this cycle on national elections.

To emphasize: this is an estimate. Three are undoubtedly some errors in the spreadsheet, both mine and others’. (Sunlight had Senate candidates Tim Scott of South Carolina and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, for instance, tagged as a House candidates.) But fixing those errors would likely have little impact on the big picture:

Spending was roughly equal, probably a slight advantage for Dems.

The trickiest part of this estimate, based on Sunlight’s candidate spreadsheet, was allocating attack-ad spending by independent groups. If outside groups opposing Cory Gardner spent $30 million  in Colorado (tallied in the spreadsheet on Gardner’s line), I posted that as $30 million “spent” by/for his opponent, Mark Udall. And vice versa. My spreadsheet’s here.

Following are the Senate race-by-race spending totals. You may spot what look like anomalies, and you may be right. I obviously haven’t vetted Sunlight’s data. But if these numbers are close to correct, Democrats can’t claim a money avalanche by Republicans as a reason for the 2014 election results.

AK BEGICH, MARK 30,633,986
SULLIVAN, DAN 24,929,865
AR COTTON, THOMAS 33,199,597
PRYOR, MARK L 26,944,292
CO GARDNER, CORY 40,680,025
UDALL, MARK E 51,528,326
DE COONS, CHRISTOPHER A 4,073,446
WADE, KEVIN L 123,614
GA NUNN, MARY MICHELLE 18,890,098
PERDUE, DAVID 26,113,966
HI CAVASSO, CAMPBELL 243,233
SCHATZ, BRIAN 5,688,359
IA BRALEY, BRUCE L 36,987,144
ERNST, JONI K 38,678,344
ID MITCHELL, NELSON 264,848
RISCH, JAMES E 977,987
IL DURBIN, DICK J 8,001,304
OBERWEIS, JAMES D “JIM” 2,944,358
KS ORMAN, GREGORY JOHN 9,951,909
ROBERTS, PAT 15,937,833
KY GRIMES, ALISON LUNDERGAN 26,119,662
MCCONNELL, MITCH 44,936,670
LA LANDRIEU, MARY L 14,742,847
CASSIDY, BILL 7,506,478
MA HERR, BRIAN 857,332
MARKEY, EDWARD J 16,618,341
ME BELLOWS, SHENNA 2,106,442
COLLINS, SUSAN M 4,864,766
MI LAND, TERRI LYNN 19,349,759
PETERS, GARY 28,049,683
MN FRANKEN, AL 20,172,311
MCFADDEN, MICHAEL 6,318,698
MS CHILDERS, TRAVIS W 4,178,607
COCHRAN, THAD 8,953,107
MT CURTIS, AMANDA 887,505
DAINES, STEVEN 6,313,452
NC HAGAN, KAY R 62,882,952
TILLIS, THOM R 41,752,166
NE DOMINA, DAVID A 1,143,959
SASSE, BENJAMIN E 6,100,640
NH BROWN, SCOTT 20,055,693
SHAHEEN, JEANNE 26,139,531
NJ BELL, JEFFREY 1,145,250
BOOKER, CORY A 16,980,057
NM UDALL, TOM 5,497,983
WEH, ALLEN 2,735,520
OK INHOFE, JAMES M 3,232,035
JOHNSON, CONSTANCE NEVLIN 542,927
LANKFORD, JAMES PAUL MR 3,899,386
SILVERSTEIN, MATTHEW BENJAMIN 455,230
OR MERKLEY, JEFFREY ALAN 9,144,950
WEHBY, MONICA 5,378,129
RI REED, JACK F 2,454,090
ZACCARIA, MARK S. 11,916
SC DICKERSON, JOYCE 68,345
GRAHAM, LINDSEY OLIN 9,602,093
HUTTO, BRAD 350,093
SCOTT, TIMOTHY 395,484
SD ROUNDS, MARION MICHAEL 5,361,460
WEILAND, RICHARD PAUL 4,503,048
TN ALEXANDER, LAMAR 7,954,929
BALL, GORDON 1,180,680
TX ALAMEEL, DAVID M 10,217,029
CORNYN, JOHN 11,521,565
VA GILLESPIE, EDWARD W 6,630,569
WARNER, MARK ROBERT 13,178,194
WV CAPITO, SHELLEY MOORE 7,918,082
TENNANT, NATALIE 2,807,272
WY ENZI, MICHAEL B 2,486,637
HARDY, CHARLES E 82,884

None of this even glances, of course, at spending on state-level races. Given the condition of our campaign/electoral system and the amount of work it took to assemble these simple numbers, I tend to wonder whether that information will ever be known.

Cross-posted at Angry Bear.


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