Tanzina Vega: You're listening to The Takeaway, I'm Tanzina Vega. The 2020 election season will be the most expensive in US history. When the dust finally settles, the total amount spent on all of the elections this year from the House to the Senate to the President will be about $14 billion according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan nonprofit that researches that kind of thing.

Of that, $6.6 billion was spent on the presidential race alone, and that includes individual donations as well as big-money donors and Super PACs. While the election is over, both presidential candidates are still asking for money. President-Elect Biden and President Trump are emailing their supporters asking them to dig a little deeper and give money to Biden's Fight Fund and Trump's official election Defense Fund.

Sheila Krumholtz is the Executive Director of the Center for Responsive Politics and she joins me now. Sheila, thanks for being with us.

Sheila Krumholtz: Thank you for having me.

Tanzina: I mean, I'm just flabbergasted by the amount of money, $14 billion with a B, $6.6 billion spent on the presidential race alone, where did this money come from, Sheila?

Sheila: We were flabbergasted too. [chuckles] We did not anticipate that and where it's coming from is really interesting. It's coming from everywhere. It's coming from small donations, which have jumped from 15% of the money to 22% of the money, from billionaires like Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, who gave over $183 million followed by Bloomberg who gave over $100 million.

It's coming from women in record-breaking numbers. One and a half million women gave two and a half-billion dollars. That amounts to about 44% of individual donations, which is a record. We're just smashing records right and left. There's no one story about where the money is coming from. It's coming from everywhere.

Tanzina: How much can individuals donate to a campaign? Are there caps on what, say, I can donate to a campaign, or is it pretty much anyone can donate however much they want?

Sheila: Well, it's complicated. Yes, an individual is limited to $2,800 per election, so $2,800 for the primary, $2,800 for the general, and now in Georgia $2,800 for the runoff. However, many, many national campaigns and increasingly state and other campaigns have Super PACs that are single-candidate Super PACs, effectively set up to be a slush fund for a particular campaign.

They can raise and spend money independent of the candidate, they cannot coordinate with a candidate but they can raise unlimited sums from unlimited sources, including corporations, or unions or trade associations, or billionaires like Mr. Adelson. They can spend that just to elect or defeat, to try to support or attack a single candidate. Those really become an extension of the campaign and important extension in competitive races.

Tanzina: How much of this money translates into actual results in terms of winning? Before we get to the presidential campaign, I want to talk about some of the Senate races we saw because, in particular here in The Takeaway, we looked at a number of Black Senate candidates who were running for office and had gotten tremendous amounts of money particularly- and Democrats more broadly, particularly after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Did that money translate into seats?

Sheila: Well, that too is both a little bit complicated and interesting this cycle. Typically, 9 out of 10 winning House candidates are the candidates that spent the most. There is a definite strong correlation to money. In the Senate, there's more volatility, it depends greatly on the idiosyncrasies of the races of the candidates of the states that are fielding races.

Generally, in the last many years, it would fall in the 80-90 percentile range. Yes, there's a strong correlation. This time in the Senate, in particular, there's a much weaker correlation, but still north of 70% of the candidates that spent the most won.

That said, of course, one of the big stories of this election is was money wasted? Did Democrats-- Many candidates came out of nowhere or surged and drew a lot of money from coast to coast. We saw in the South Carolina Senate race, for instance, Graham-Harrison, $180 million was raised by all the candidates. In Arizona, Kelly-McSally, $145 million. Kentucky, $144 million, so huge sums of money.

You can't though just look again at the money spent by the candidates, we also have to consider the money spent by the outside groups. When we do that, North Carolina Senate was actually the most expensive, with 67 raised by the candidates, $220 million raised by outside groups, so all totaled nearly $300 million spent just on that single race. The Senate races were awash in money.

Yes, a lot of that money was probably raised late, maybe too late to be spent efficiently effectively. Maybe it's really not about the money. After some threshold amount, there are other factors that come into play or even more important.

So we always say money isn't everything, you can't rely solely on money. That's why we don't have self-funded Congress by and large. It is one critical factor, wthout it, you can't win but too much of it doesn't guarantee anything.

Tanzina: We mentioned at the top of the segment that both the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign are still reaching out to donors for more money. What do they need more money for at this point?

Sheila: Yes, they're still waging their legal battles. For Trump, it is to contest the results and for Biden, it is to count every vote. They're supported too by the party, the parties now have these legal accounts set up dedicated to recounts and legal challenges, about 22 million for the DNC and 14 million for the RNC.

They're still fundraising to support those efforts. Trump is also raising money for his new leadership pack, which some say point to a 2024, potential run in 2024, and had been raising money to pay down his debt. There are a number of things that--

Tanzina: I just want to stop you there for one second, to pay down his personal debt?

Sheila: The campaign debt. That had been something that was advertised during fundraising committee that was raising funds, it was advertised in the fine print, but it was advertised as one of the things that donors would be helping to do.

Tanzina: Sheila, the $14 billion that have been spent on elections this year was calculated using Federal Election Commission records. Is there a chance that there's additional money that might not have been recorded, i.e, dark money?

Sheila: Yes, there is certainly money that is not included in this $14 billion tally, which is, of course, a projection. It could be higher or lower. We know that there's money that was spent really to shape the outcomes of federal elections that was spent before the reporting windows, and so it was not reported to the Federal Election Commission.

That may be money that was identify the candidate, it's clear to every viewer what the purpose of the Ad is, but it's not considered necessarily political. If it doesn't fall into that 30-day window before primary or a 60-day window before the general, that would not necessarily be caught.

Tanzina: The election that has so many Americans' eyeballs right now. The attention of so many Americans is over in Georgia, where there's Senate runoff on January 5th, which essentially could decide which party controls the Senate. How much money, Sheila, are we expected to see flooding into these campaigns leading up to the election?

We mentioned that individual donors have a cap at $2,800. Outside of the individual donors, I imagine there will be Super PACs and other special interest groups, including folks over at the Lincoln project, for example, who may be putting money towards advertising or other efforts to elect their candidate.

Sheila: Yes, we won't see the reports on spending by the candidates until actually late December, quite a ways from now. We can already see from Ad buys that 45 million was spent in just the first week after runoffs were announced mostly by the campaign's, but other important, large Super PACs. The Senate leadership fund has already pledged $9 million between the two races.

Mitch McConnell allied American Crossroads has already placed $3.3 million in Ads. The money is already stacking up. This is a huge focus now, of course, all eyes are on Georgia. There could be some donor fatigue, but I think that most believe the money will be huge, both from the campaigns and especially from outside groups given, as you said, the races could decide party control of the Senate and stand-alone special elections like this typically draw a ton of money. This one it's all hands on deck for sure.

Tanzina: Sheila Krumholtz is the Executive Director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that researches money in politics. Sheila, thanks for helping us out with this.

Sheila: It was my pleasure. Thank you.

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