Why do politicians need so much money to campaign? Can’t they just drive around and speak? Maybe some commercials? Why 100’s of millions of dollars?
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They pay people to help manage the campaign. Then there’s travel and lodging for everywhere they go. Have to pay for the venue as well.
And TV ads aren’t cheap. Can cost up to a few hundred to a few thousand dollars to air one ad. Multiplied by the number of ads they show show all over the country and that adds up quickly.
Running in politics is essentially a popularity contest. It’s about doing everything you can to get your name out there and to make as much of an impact on the voters as possible.
1. They have staff – politicians have a lot of volunteers but campaign mangers, speech writers, advertising experts, spin doctors, drivers, security, they all need to be paid for.
2. space cost money – The campaign office is usually in retail space and costs rent. You also need to rent halls, community centers, and stadiums, etc to do rallies. Those aren’t free.
3. Advertising – Every print out, flyer, poster, yard sign, and TV ad costs money.
4. Travel – travel costs money, including air fair and gas for road trips. Plus hotels and working space.
If you’re asking about the US it’s better to r/askanamerican.
they don’t travel alone. traveling with 100 people and booking 100 rooms every night during campaign season takes money. booking convention halls isn’t free. a single room can be tens of thousands of dollars. your staff don’t work for free. tv ads are not free. they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a long campaign.
In other countries, all campaigns are publicly funded to keep money from determining the winner.
Eventually, I hope, the US will adopt this…Or we can keep raising the stakes and allowing the rich to determine who gets to be President.
Tons of people run for election with limited budgets. They rarely ever win because elections are big on popularity and name recognition.
If you’re talking about presidential candidates, theu need to employ large teams of people in many different locations all across the country, staff offices, pay rent, buy equipment, and cover all the other costs associated with running an office. On top of that you need teams of lawyers and accountants to keep track of everything you do and file the appropriate paperwork. But the number one expense is advertising. If you haven’t seeing the type of political advertising that happens in a contested presidential campaign, then you likely live in a comfortably blue or red state, or at least comfortably blue or red area. But if you live anywhere near a purple region or at least one that could become purple, you’ll notice but as the elections draw nearer and nearer, more and more commercials are political. This is very expensive, and like it or not is essential to the modern American election process. And since issues for both a candidate and that candidates opponents can change day to day and sometimes even an hour to hour, lots of stuff needs to be done and redone constantly. This just adds to the expense. Travel cost money, polling cost money, paper cost money, signs cost money, bumper stickers cost money, and countless other things too numerous to list but that are a part of every campaign. It’s not hard to get these actual numbers, since campaigns have to file reports about how they raise and spend money, so you can look up the major candidates in the last election cycle and get a really good sense of how they spent their money
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