The Cost of Political Advertisement

As we all know by now, the 2016 presidential elections will be taking place next year. That means the primary elections for the general election party nominees must be chosen soon, to begin running for the general elections just around the corner. Generally, parties start out with a wide range of candidates who wish to run on behalf of their party. Last election their were 9 candidates who ran in the Republican primaries, and were listed on at least 2 ballots. This year, there were a whopping 16 men, all prominent in their own states, who participated in the first debate of the season. Yet, an interesting candidate stood out this year. His name is Donald Trump. Seem familiar? Well, he should. Trump is a multi billionaire business mogul who owns several TV networks, such as Ms.Universe, Ms.America, and has also appeared on several other hit sitcoms like Fresh Prince of Bell-air. He is also known for his strong and controversial opinions of myriad subjects from women to immigration causing massive storms of arguments occurring on social media such as Twitter. Much like everyone of the other candidates, Trump is willing to put nearly anything on the line for this election, but he has a little bit more to offer when it comes to sheer numbers. In a recent interview at the Iowa State Fair, he told reporters that he was willing to invest a billion dollars into the election! This is nearly equivalent to the amount of money both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama spent in 2012, which included the donations from all around the country. That tells us that Trump will expend much more than just 1 billion dollars by the end of his campaigning, if he wins the primary. Notice a pattern? The amount of money being spent by candidates seems quite extravagant. This lead me to a question that may end up being evident and important for future articles on this blog. Is the amount of money that is being spent on elections gradually increasing in comparison to past elections?


To find out the answer to our first question, we have to start from the basics. To make this easier, we'll control which type of elections to be researched on. Instead of finding data from every single election occurring in each county in the US, lets just focus on general presidential elections. I've compiled a chart on the total amount of money spent each year during the elections, but only Republican and Democratic expenditures will be included because of the parties' continuity.

The money is measured in millions of dollars. The trend shows us that the spending had been gradually going up with an average increase of 28 million dollars worth of expenditures per election until 2000, when the costs began dramatically increasing by nearly 100% each election.

The chart above shows the amount of money that was spent by both the parties during the primary presidential elections from 1976 to 2012. The money in fact has increased over time, however it exponentially increased since 2000. Well, how much will be spent on this next election? The approximate that the spending has gone up by 200% in the 8 years between 2000 and 2008. Multiplying the cost in 2008 by 3, or going by the same 200% increase, the cost in 2016 should be about 3180 million dollars or 3.18 billion dollars. Yet, who knows? Math isn't always correct, so all we can do is wait and see how much it will actually be, since all of this is just alleged.

Let's be honest though. How many people actually enjoy being drowned in countless ads about why they shouldn't vote for a certain candidate and should vote for another one? Also, do candidates invest more money advertising their own strong points or their adversaries short comings more often? Well, we'll have to come back to the drawing board on that.

Can money buy education?

As we all know, school rankings make an important part of our decisions on various decisions such as where we live, how far away from the house should be from the school, et cetera. The common perception in our society is that money defines the quality. The question we seek to answer today is whether money is a major factor in a school's success. We'll look at the top 25 most elite public schools in the nation, based on the "US News Rankings " list and see the amount of money given to each school from their district.

Money is given to public schools by using a value set by the district which is based on the amount of money per student. The unit is called DCPP or the district cost per pupil. The majority of this money is taken from the taxes collected by the district, and a education usually makes up a big portion of the funds the district collects. However certain districts may put more importance to education, thus giving more DCPP. The chart I've compiled shows the rank of the school, it's districts DCPP, and the state average's DCPP. The state average is important because with this, we can tell if that district is either an anomaly in its district or near the average of it's state. For the sake of comparison, the national average DCPP is $10700 and varies heavily from state to state to state. The District of Columbia has a DCPP of nearly $20,000, being the highest in the country. The lowest DCPP is in Utah with a cost of $6555 per pupil.

The above table has the values for top 25 schools. The N/A values are to represent that the district didn't tell its DCPP online.

After I finished compiling all of the data, one pattern came to my attention. Many of the schools were in districts with higher DCPPs than their state average, yet the farther you go down the list, this pattern seems to fade. This can allow us to assume that money becomes more relevant the better the schools do in other categories such as SAT and AP averages. So is the money given to private schools a factor in its success? Without a doubt, yes! Yet, this cannot be taken too far to the extent that it's the only factor. Many other factors must be present, such as students who are truly voracious for knowledge and teachers not just willing, but excited to teach. Money cannot act as a surrogate for the other factors that a school is judged by, but can act as a supplement to a schools ability to do more and reach just a little farther.

On another note, one other sequence came to my attention. 14 of the top 25 schools are from from the Southern states.  5 of the 25 schools were from Texas, or 20%. Another 4 out of the 25 schools were from Arizona, just under 20%. Yet none of the top 10 universities are located in these areas.  

It may also be noted that none of the top 10 high schools are from North East where most of elite universities such as the Ivy leagues are situated. Why is this? We'll have to go back to the drawing board on that.