“Well, I got news for Mr. Bloomberg, and that is the American people are sick and tired of billionaires buying elections.” So declared Bernie Sanders earlier in February, reiterating an increasingly common American perception that everything is for sale, including political offices.

In light of this, I have a small (and ultimately encouraging) update: Everything you think you know about money in politics is probably wrong. That is, unless what you were thinking was, “Money has an incredibly limited impact on electoral outcomes in general elections and almost no impact on elected officials’ policy preferences once in office.”

If that is in fact what you were thinking, then you’re spot on.

Much like baseball and backyard barbecues, complaining about the influence of money in politics is a time-honored American pastime. What freedom-loving American didn’t blush at the record-breaking $124 million spent on the 2014 North Carolina Senate race? Or the mind-numbing $55 million spent in 2017 over a measly Georgia House seat? Each of these is, of course, a drop in the bucket compared to the grotesque $505 million that Michael Bloomberg has already spent during the presidential primary alone.

Although most of us have a healthy dose of suspicion when it comes to money in politics — a 2015 poll conducted by CBS News found that 84 percent of Americans believe that money has too much influence in political campaigns — studies show that across the board, money has a surprisingly limited impact on electoral outcomes.

Does Money Make Political Champions? Not so much.

In a 2015 article for the Annual Review of Political Science, University of Toronto Law Professor Yasmin Dawood tackled the question of money’s influence in politics head-on. Citing multiple previous studies, Dawood makes the shocking and counterintuitive claim that, despite the obscene amount of money spent on elections (particularly by incumbents, who on average spend three times as much as challengers), the academic literature has so far “not been able to conclusively establish a causal connection between incumbent spending and electoral success.”

Americans overwhelmingly support legislation that would reign in campaign spending. But is it necessary? (Graph courtesy of the Pew Research Center.)

Given that most of us pessimistically (and rather intuitively) take it for granted that enough money can buy an election, this is a shocking conclusion for Dawood to make, particularly when one considers that 91 percent of candidates who spend more, win. So how can it be the case that money doesn’t guarantee electoral victory when at the same time almost everyone who spends more money is guaranteed an electoral victory?

According to Professor Richard Lau at Rutgers University, it’s likely a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. In a 2018 article for FiveThirtyEight, Lau makes the argument that while most of us assume that money creates winners, it’s more likely the case that winners create money. That is, candidates who perform well in the polls ahead of elections are likely to receive more donations than their poorly performing competitors. Remember learning about the difference between correlation and causation? That’s what’s at play here.

This is not to say that money has no impact, but it is to say that it is not the definitive factor that most of us offhandedly assume it to be. At the end of the day, no amount of money can turn a losing candidate into a winner.

Surprisingly, Our Politicians Are More Honest Than You Think.

“But wait,” you protest, “Money may not buy victory, but it certainly buys influence once a candidate is elected. Right?” Wrong.

A 2003 meta-analysis in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that, “In three out of four instances, campaign [PAC] contributions had no statistically significant effects on legislation.” In practice, this means that if a given PAC, let’s say, the world’s largest oil company, financially supported a slew of candidates with the expectation of receiving beneficial legislation in return, they’d be stymied 75 percent of the time. The futility of this company’s donations is thrown into even sharper relief when controlling for the preferences of a given legislator’s constituency. The 2003 study found that taking voters’ preferences into account “almost completely eliminates the effects of contributions on legislative voting.” This means that legislators who supported this hypothetical oil company’s legislation would likely have done so even without receiving campaign contributions, based simply on the beliefs of their constituency.

Political Campaigns: A Fool’s Errand?

Perhaps the most shocking revelation comes courtesy of a 2018 article published by the American Political Science Review, which found that “the best estimate for the persuasive effects of campaign contact and advertising — such as mail, phone calls, and canvassing — on Americans’ candidate choices in general elections is zero.” (Though less data is available for online and television advertising, researchers Joshua Kalla of Berkeley University and David Broockman of Stanford University estimate that they have a similarly negligible impact on voter preference.)

If you’re still paying attention, now is a good time for your jaw to drop.

Kalla and Broockman’s study essentially demonstrates that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaign advertising across the country has little or no persuasive effect on voters in general elections. Genuine persuasion, according to the researchers, is “extremely rare.” While voters’ preferences may vacillate throughout the election as a result of campaign contact, Kalla and Broockman clarify that “when we focus on the choices voters actually make on election day in a general election, we find that any early persuasion has decayed and that any persuasion near election day fails reliably.”

Considering that candidates in the 2020 election are estimated to spend $6 to $10 billion on political ads, this finding is either incredibly encouraging or incredibly depressing, depending on your perspective (and preferred candidate).

“Buying” an election is actually not as easy as we often think.

This is not to say that the Democratic slate of candidates should simply hang up the gloves and wait to see what happens: campaigns are definitely still important for agenda setting and election turnout. Insofar as they actually change people’s minds, however, they are nearly superfluous. People like who they like, and infrequently change their minds, hundred-million-dollar campaigns be damned.

A Word of Caution

Despite the vast body of research that has established money’s relatively limited impact on politics and political campaigns, it is always critically important to acknowledge the limits of scholarly findings in the field of political science. No study, no matter how thorough, can be perfect — such is the nature of scientific experimentation. Although decades of research all suggest that money plays a far smaller role in politics than we tend to think, each of the previously referenced studies is subject to limitations. The impact of money in primary campaigns, for example, is much less understood than in general elections, as is the effect of money that challenger candidates spend attempting to defeat incumbents. Additional research in both of these fields is thus needed.

Furthermore, none of this information should be taken to mean that money can’t be an insidious or corruptive force in American politics. Instances abound of elected officials using their office for monetary gain. A recent and notorious example of such nefarious double-dealing is provided by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who went to prison after allegedly attempting to sell a senate seat (he was recently pardoned by President Trump for reasons unknown).

As egregious an assault on our democratic institutions as this is, the previous studies should help elucidate the fact that, by and large, Americans’ deeply engrained suspicion of our public officials is (in this regard, at least) largely unfounded, the Blagojeviches of the world aside. While this should be cause for celebration—or at least a brief reprieve from our pessimism—it is of course essential to remain eternally vigilant, lest characters like Blagojevich become emboldened by our complacency (not that Americans have a reputation for that particular vice).

Putting It All Together

In summation, one does not simply “buy” an election, despite Bernie Sanders’ loudest protestations. One does not even really “buy” political influence, although elected officials have been found to be more partial to the preferences of the wealthy than of the less well-off. Though large sums of money are necessary for any campaign, each of the aforementioned studies shows that money has a much smaller impact across the political spectrum than what 84 percent of Americans generally believe.

The fact of the matter is that the “special sauce” of elections — that indescribable gut feeling that gets people off their couch and into the voting booth — simply can’t be created with money, no matter how vast the sum. A famous example of this is of course the 2016 presidential election, in which Hillary Clinton raised $1.19 billion to Donald Trump’s $646 million, and we all know how that ended (hint: Hillary didn’t win).

These conclusions can be viewed in several different ways. The first is quite positive: As far as elections go, any concerns that the United States has descended into an oligarchic tyranny are statistically unfounded. Alternatively, one can look at these results and see an American public that is utterly and stubbornly incapable of changing its mind once it’s been made up. Lastly, we can settle into a kind of resigned solace knowing that though we are free from the tyranny of the rich, we remain shackled by our own political preconceptions.