Why it costs $900 million to be elected POTUS.

 I am told that the candidate who spends the most money wins the election 95% of the time. I am surprised. However, my surprise is why is it not 100%? In the spirit of the "Dumb and Dumber famous - one in a million line," it means the candidate who does not have the most money has a better chance of winning than Harry (Jim Carrey) had of getting a date with Mary. Harry never gave up either. The POTUS candidates only give up when the money runs out not when their principles give out. Hence money trumps principles in an election.

It is not that money buys votes. It is that you can not begin to consider a candidate unless you are exposed to him. Exposes are linked to advertising impressions which are linked to money. Typically, it costs about $5 for 1,000 impressions. If you need 60,000,000 votes and you need to have each person see an impression 100 times they believe your message, then a candidate needs to purchase 100X60 million or 6 billion impressions, which at $5 per 1,000 is $30 million.

Now the problem is that no matter how often you run an ad, people do not see every ad so each candidate must run 30 ads to get a genuine single impression, hence the final cost for a POTUS candidate is 30X30 million or $900 million. A candidate can save $100 million with good media coverage. And that is why Iowa is important, not its measly 28 electoral votes.

Now we know that advertising works. Or why else would we buy bottled water for a $1 a bottle when you can make 1,000 gallons (8,000 bottles) for 25 cents? Why would we be buying things we do not need at prices we can not afford?  Come on be realistic, a Coach purse for $500? A Rolex watch for $30,000? With these items in mind, for some reason, many of us are still surprised when we link money to POTUS candidates. We believe that POTUS candidates are marketed to us differently than a Rolex watch, a Coach purse or a Mission Impossible movie. They are not. It is all about purchasing impressions. For example, Google was built on selling impressions. They are called ads and Google sells billions and billions of them.

Now while many of you are busy checking my impression calculations, I need a bottle of AquaPure. It is the best. I am going to relax with one of my books and see if I can learn something. I have forgotten so much already.