The US midterm elections are on course to become the most expensive in history next month, estimated at well over $5bn (£3.15bn) – an indication of how much is riding on the outcome of the biggest test of US public opinion since the 2008 White House race.
With the Democrats facing electoral disaster and Barack Obama battling to save his presidency, the Republicans are resurgent, their campaign chests bursting with money from big corporations whose spending power has been unleashed by a supreme court ruling earlier this year providing anonymity for donors.
The estimated $5bn dwarfs the $1bn spent on the White House race.
Public Citizen, a non-profit organisation that tracks corporate spending on elections and lobbying, said today Republicans had received six times more cash than the Democrats last month, and this could rise to 10 to one this month. Much of the cash had come from Wall Street, banking and the health and pharmaceuticals industry, it said.
"We are going to see record amounts. This is the first year in which all limits are removed. The supreme court ruling reverses a century of political tradition in the US in which corporations are not supposed to get involved," said Craig Holman, Public Citizen's representative on Capitol Hill.
At stake on 2 November are 37 of the 100 US Senate seats, all 435 House seats, 37 of the 50 governorships and a raft of state legislative places. Voting has already begun in seven states.
Polls suggest the Democrats face their biggest drubbing since 1994, losing control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans, and seeing their nine-seat majority in the Senate reduced to about two or three, with an outside chance of losing it altogether.
As an indication of the historic scale of the looming defeat, a House seat in the south that has not been Republican since 1875 could now go either way.
Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's centre for politics, is writing a book about these midterms elections. He is so confident about the outcome that he already has the title: The Pendulum Swings.
"These elections will determine how much freedom of movement President Obama has in the second half of his term. That is what it is about," Sabato said. "There are only two possibilities: he is going to have modest freedom or no freedom."
Most expensive elections in American history - 2010 midterms
Reply With Quote