Are the billionaires taking over American politics?

The world’s richest man currently sits close to the president-elect, using his powerful social media platform X to voice his opinions on everything from daylight saving time to visas for skilled workers. . As a new administration takes office, the number of millionaires and billionaires moving to Washington will increase. This is good for real estate agents in the Washington area, but is it good for democracy? A person who makes $14 million a day will receive $1,976.00 (the average monthly Social Security payment), but is it good for democracy? Can we understand how important it is to Americans?

It’s natural to worry that the super-rich have too much influence. Therefore, it is important to pay attention to whether the people who are actually elected, and by extension the final decision makers, live lives similar to the average American. One way to look at this is to track the number of people who run for office and make significant campaign contributions out of their own pocket. To do this, we use data collected by OpenSecrets to identify every president in a primary or general election who contributed $1 million or more from personal funds to their campaigns between 2018 and 2024. , Congress, and Senate candidates. of Americans can donate this amount to a political campaign. Especially considering that the average net worth of Americans is $1,063,700.

Here’s what we found:

Across the four election cycles from 2018 to 2024, 183 candidates contributed more than $1 million in personal funds to their campaigns. Of these, only 33 candidates, or 18%, were successful. Seven of the candidates were incumbents. The majority of these were Republicans. Only 51 Democrats, or 28% of candidates, contributed more than $1 million to their campaigns. Republicans accounted for 68% of all candidates who donated more than $1 million to their campaigns. (The total included eight independent candidates.) The average cost per vote varied widely. Leading presidential candidates spent the most per vote.

Table 1 shows the personal spending of Senate and House candidates from three perspectives. Because of the wide range of expenditures, the median is lower than the average. For example, in 2024, Democratic Congressman David Trone (D-Md.) spent a whopping $62,771,000 on his primary campaign against Angela Alsobrooks, but he received only 10% of the vote in the primary. I lost to her by the difference. At $219 per vote, Tron spent significantly more than the median and average of 2024 congressional candidates.

While personal spending in some Senate and Congressional campaigns is high, as Table 2 shows, it falls far short of what some leading presidential candidates spend to win their party’s presidential nomination. do not have. The biggest spender was North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who received so few votes before withdrawing from the race that he ended up spending more than $27,000 per vote.

The reality is that most wealthy people who spend their personal money on campaigns suffer some kind of significant loss. Why would they do that? There are probably psychological reasons. The common vanity and belief, “If I’m so rich, why don’t I have power?” Some people may think that they can “repay the favor” to the country that has made them rich. Perhaps some of you are passionate about one big issue. For example, Tom Steyer had a strong belief that we must address the threat of climate change. Some people mistakenly think that business genius is the same as political genius. That may be true for Donald Trump, but it’s not true for many others.

Should we be relieved about the state of our democracy because of the failures of privately funded politicians? Just a little bit. Instead of running for office, more and more very wealthy people are using their wealth to lobby and fund advocacy groups, avoiding political responsibility through dark money. And many of them have relationships with politically sophisticated people, and the richest man in the world appears to be sitting at the right-hand man of the next president. Do the interests of Elon Musk and Donald Trump align, and more importantly, do their policies align with the interests of their voters?

In 2013, three political scientists studied the political views of more than 100 wealthy Americans whose median wealth was $7.5 million. They found significant differences in the policy preferences of the wealthy compared to the average American. Wealthy individuals often have different priorities, but their influence over democracy varies depending on their ability to shape policy and political outcomes.