Most money lost on a political campaign

The United States’ 2012 election cycle included a vast amount of sheer waste. Six American billionaires – firstly Sheldon Adelson, but also Harold Simmon, Robert Rowling, Joseph Craft, Jerrold Perenchio, and B. Wayne Hughes – lost sums confirmed at over $80m (and perhaps much more) trying to unseat President Obama and other Democrats, to very little effect. They were not alone. Political analyst Karl Rove’s Super Political Action Committee, American Crossroads, is reported by funding experts at The Sunlight Foundation to have spent just under $105m supporting no winning candidates, and opposing just two losing candidates; a return on donors’ money of just 1.29 per cent. A recent study from Rice University and Long Island University has suggested that those corporations spending money on politics usually had lower stock market returns than those companies that did not.