The first notable congressional race of the Trump era, the 2017 contest to fill the seat in Georgia’s 6th District, attracted a huge amount of money, especially on the Democratic side. The newly formed #Resistance was eager to start beating back the Republican Party, and if Jon Ossoff—young, well-spoken, genuinely from the government and here to help—could beat Karen Handel, it would be a symbolic repudiation of Trumpism in exactly the kind of place (the suburbs surrounding a major city in a red state) Democrats hoped to win.
Ossoff raised an incredible $30 million, most of it from small donors, giving him more than three times the war chest of his opponent. Millions in outside spending flooded the district ($14 million was devoted to opposing Ossoff), and the national media, starved for election coverage, swarmed over it.
Following a runoff with Handel, Ossoff lost 51-48 despite that money advantage. And that should concern Democrats heading into the 2021 Georgia runoff elections for U.S. Senate. Once again, Ossoff is running in a hotly contested race that has attracted national media attention. Once again, he has a big cash advantage over his Republican opponent: As of the latest FEC disclosures, he’s raised $32 million to incumbent David Perdue’s $21 million. And once again, he may be headed for defeat.
Democrats have in ActBlue an online infrastructure that allows them to collect donations more quickly and efficiently than ever before. The party’s popularity among the professional class in major cities gives its politicians (or at least its most famous politicians) a reliable funding stream that isn’t dependent on corporate or billionaire cash. But one of the lessons of the 2020 cycle is that money doesn’t always guarantee electoral success. In the Georgia Senate races—both Ossoff’s and Raphael Warnock’s—we could see Democrats once again succeeding at fundraising but failing to win office. Here are three reasons money won’t be enough:
You can’t buy a lot of things
Political scientists have found that in any given race, the candidate who has raised more money usually wins. But this doesn’t mean money buys elections. In many cases, incumbents raise more money than their challengers because donors know the challenger’s cause is hopeless—in other words, winning elections leads to better fundraising numbers, not the other way around.
In competitive races where both the incumbent and the challenger have raised enough money to spread their messages and achieve name recognition, money may not provide much of an edge at all. In several close congressional races this year, Republicans won despite being outspent by significant margins. Frustratingly, it’s probably impossible to determine conclusively why these losses happened. Maybe in some cases, the Democratic candidate was unusually weak and the Republican was unusually strong; some districts may have tilted more Republican than anticipated because voters didn’t like Democrats’ message, associated them with “defund the police” or credited the Republicans with giving them stimulus payments. (Insert your ideology’s preferred electoral explanation here.)
In 2018, when less attention was on Georgia’s 6th District, Lucy McBath did what Ossoff couldn’t do and beat Karen Handel by just 4,000 votes, despite having raised just $2.6 million to Handel’s $8.6 million. She might have been a better candidate for that district, 2018 may have been a better environment for Democrats than 2017, or she may have benefited from the higher turnout that comes in a regular election year. But in both 2018 and 2017, it’s safe to say money didn’t swing the outcome one way or another.
What you can buy often isn’t worth it
Campaigns use donations to buy office space, commission polls, fund canvassing efforts and lots of other things. But mostly, they spend money on advertising, and studies have repeatedly shown that political ads rarely convince anyone of anything. That doesn’t mean ads are pointless—advertisements play a key role in boosting a candidate’s name recognition, which is especially important for non-incumbents.
There’s little risk that voters won’t know Ossoff or Warnock’s names by Election Day, however. And it’s possible that campaigns can hit saturation points where more ads won’t do much of anything and where more money therefore doesn’t help. In Maine’s Senate race, Democrat Sara Gideon lost unexpectedly badly to Susan Collins despite being incredibly well-funded—in fact, she had more money than could be sensibly spent in a relatively small media market. Buying ad space in Georgia is more expensive than it is in Maine, but more than $400 million will be spent on political ads related to the Senate races by January 5. The marginal value of any additional ad buys is probably very low at this point. Voters will know about the election and the candidates, and one more spot won’t change any minds.
Small donors can be countered by one very big donor
Warnock isn’t raising money quite as well as Ossoff, but he has raised $21 million, including nearly $10 million from small donors. That dwarfs the fundraising operation incumbent Kelly Loeffler has put together, which has raised less than $6 million. The catch is that Loeffler doesn’t need to raise money—she’s already donated $22 million to her own campaign, and would likely spend more if needed. Her immense wealth (she and her husband are worth more than $500 million) is likely a reason Georgia Governor Brian Kemp appointed her in the first place—it’s easier to campaign when you don’t have to worry about dialing for dollars.
Loeffler’s money doesn’t guarantee her a win, of course. She’s never won an election before and may yet be felled by Warnock’s portrayal of her and her husband as corrupt oligarchs who engaged in what was essentially insider trading as the pandemic broke out. But her example shows the limits of Democrats’ army of small donors. Though small donations have been on the rise, gifts under $200 still made up only about one-fifth of all money spent in the 2020 cycle. In other words, the work of building a successful fundraising operation can be counteracted by your opponent being extremely rich.
The successes Democrats have enjoyed in fundraising over the past few years shouldn’t be understated. In some cases, this success has allowed candidates to avoid fundraising from corporate sources that progressives view as corrupt. And even if money doesn’t guarantee victories, surely having too much of it is better than not having enough. But if they lose the elections in Georgia, it won’t be for lack of funds.
