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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures." -- Daniel Webster
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Tuesday, June 19, 2012 :::
Especially in New York City, where a radius of ten miles around any voter includes portions of several Congressional districts, it makes sense that a well-financed campaign for anything more local than Senator is going to have a great advantage over a poorly-financed one, where the boundary between the two is probably seven figures. In the general election for the President, though, I'm having trouble imagining that Adelson's $10,000,000 is money well spent; it's not as though a bit more advertising will help Romney with name recognition, and I suspect that its highest value use is likely mostly to go toward preparing and running the GOTV effort in November.
For people who think it salient that Walker outspent Barrett by however much it was in the recent recall attempt, I'd like something of a breakdown:
| Would have voted for |
Voted for | | Walker | Barrett | Neither |
Walker | A | B | C |
Barrett | D | E | F |
Neither | G | H | I |
If Walker had been constrained to spend the amount of money that Barrett did, how many voters would have changed their votes, and why? For small amounts of money in either primaries or local races, I can imagine B and C filling up as voters who don't otherwise consider the candidate become more aware, and as self-fulfilling expectations self-fulfill. At the scale of money and name recognition at which this campaign was operating, maybe C is built up a little bit by GOTV efforts — we can hire a van to run to the senior citizen center, or another phone line to make calls — and I can even imagine some very small population in B if it allowed him to spend extra money early somehow "framing the debate" or some such, but it's hard for me to imagine B and C make that much of a difference, and it's hard for me to imagine most of the complainants making a case consistent with their other advocacy that the legal votes of people who were helped or encouraged to the polls are somehow dirty.
::: posted by dWj at 5:40 PM
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