Americans go for presidential elections after every four years. During the campaign period, the financial experts begin to project the finances likely to be used. The 2016 presidential campaigns were no exception with regards to the financial spending for the presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton’s futile campaigns outspent the successful campaigns of Donald Trump by a notable margin. The Democratic National Committee on campaigns also outspent the Republican side considerable amount. While there have been conflicting reports on the accurate figures that were raised and spent by the presidential candidates, the reports generally agree that Hillary Clinton raised the highest amount of money on campaigns. According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton raised up to 1.4 billion dollars (Washington Post, 2018). Hillary's fundraising operations included small donor operations, super PACs, bundlers as well as her own networks. Trump managed to raise a total of 957.6 million dollars from the super PACs, donors and his own networks (Washington Post, 2018).
The small donation is defined as small-dollar contributions or donations from supporters either through the internet platforms or any other kind of money donations given to support the party in form of the small amount of money. 16% of Clinton's campaign funds came from small donations of 200 dollars or even less (Washington Post, 2018). 26 percent of Trump's campaigns came from small donations (Washington Post, 2018).
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Super PACs raise a lot of money from unions, corporations, individuals, and associations to either advocate for or against political candidates. Contrary to the traditional PACs, the super CAPs are not allowed to donate money directly to the political candidates and their spending are not monitored or overseen by the candidates that benefit from them (Stratmann, 2017). Super CAPs are required by the law to report their donors to the Federal Election Commission either on a period of half a year or monthly basis depending on the choice of the super CAPs (Witko, 2017). A super CAP helps by advocating for the election of a particular candidate or opposing the election of the candidate by choosing to be in charge of the marketing strategy for the candidate or offer to campaign against the candidate through the media.
The super PACs played a significant role with regards to the contributions for the presidential candidates they supported in 2016 presidential elections. For example, Hillary Clinton received a total of 204.4 million dollars from her super PAC supporters (Washington Post, 2018). This translates to 13 percent out of the total contributions she had for the campaigns which were 1.7 billion dollars. Trump, on the other hand, received 79.3 million dollars from the super CAPs that supported his presidential bid. While Bernie Sanders opted to quit the race for Hillary Clinton, he had also raised a substantial amount from the super CAPs (Stratmann, 2017). Sanders had raised a sum of 234.3 million dollars with 6.3 million dollars coming from the super CAPs and other independent groups. Martin O'Malley who left the race on 2nd of February raised a total of 6.3 million dollars as the total contributions and 856.7 thousand dollars as the contributions from his super CAPs and other independent groups.
Ted Cruz who left the race on May 3 raised a total of 93.2 million dollars with 89.6 million dollars of the total contributions coming from his super CAPs. Jeb Bush who left the race on 20th February raised 34.7 million and receives 124.7 million dollars from his super CAPs and other independent groups (Witko, 2017). Democratic Party had raised at least 267 million dollars from funds which had been raised through two joint committees. Republican Donald Trump, on the other hand, made an announcement that he was writing off 50 million dollars which he had lent his campaign. The major super CAP supporting Hillary Clinton named Priorities USA had in 2012 backed Obama raising a sum of 79 million dollars. Trump who had initially mentioned in the primaries that he would fund his campaign ended up collecting almost 269 million dollars from other donors.
References
Stratmann, T. (2017). Campaign Finance: A Review and an Assessment of the State of the Literature.
The Washington Post. (2018). Election 2016. The Washington Post . Retrieved December 23, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/?noredirect=on
Witko, C. (2017). Regulation and Upper Class Bias in Campaign Finance Systems. Election Law Journal , 16 (1), 6-20.
