The social unrest roiling Quebec is colour-coded red. One cannot miss the hundreds of thousands of people with cloth of the colour pinned to their coats and satchels; the stickers pasted on street poles and storefront mannequins; and the sheets fluttering from balconies and windows. The red squares – punning visually on a French expression to be squarely in the red, or in debt – are a gesture of solidarity with university and college students on a massive general strike against government tuition fee hikes.
Just How Much Money Does It Take To Become President?
February 22, 2012
Barack Obama spent $730 million getting to the White House in 2008—twice as much as George W. Bush spent 4 years earlier and more than 260 times what Abraham Lincoln spent in his first election (as measured in 2011 dollars). Looking at the total costs of presidential elections over the past 150 years, it would seem that the White House is the ultimate recession-proof commodity:
So is the White House overpriced? Depends on what you're comparing it against. The increase in campaign costs (measured in real dollars) significantly outpaced the price of gold's rise over the 20th century. Yet between 1908 and 2008, real campaign costs did not keep up with real GDP growth.*
We'll see if these trends hold; 2012 could beat all records for campaign spending—and that's not countingsuper-PAC money.
Note: Election costs include all major candidates' spending and cost of primaries, when known; they do not include outside spending.
