Big ballot bucks and campaign cash
Floridians are heading to the polls Tuesday after a pricey campaign season.
According to Ballotpedia, Florida saw the second most ballot campaign spending in the country, with only California ahead.
Across the country, of the 159 ballot measures, the two most expensive are Amendment 3 and Amendment 4 in Florida.
If passed, Amendment 3 will legalize marijuana for all adults 21 and older, while Amendment 4 would enshrine abortion rights into the Florida constitution.
Research group OpenSecrets reports that of the more than $417 million raised for ballot measures across the country, $125 million has been raised in support or opposition of Florida’s Amendment 3, and $85 million for or against Amendment 4.
Patrick Rickert, associate professor of political science at Rollins College, said this spending is unusual.
“Floridians are no strangers to a lot of campaign spending, because the thing that tends to determine campaign spending is the competitiveness of the race,” he said. “Florida, when they were a swing state nationally, saw a lot more spending, but because these ballot initiatives require a supermajority to pass, they are more competitive now, even at a time when Florida has become less competitive, at least on a partisan basis.”
Although ballot measures are receiving a large amount of contributions, Rickert said congressional races also attract a lot of money from out of state, especially if it is expected to be a close election or potentially determine control of the House of Representatives or the Senate.
But, he said as Florida has become more Republican and less competitive statewide, campaigns have received less money. For example, the Senate race here is between incumbent Republican Rick Scott and former U.S. Rep. and Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powel.
“This year, the Senate race in Florida is the ninth most expensive Senate race of the 33 total, but nowhere near the amount that is being spent in Texas, Montana, or Ohio, the far more competitive Senate races,” he said.
Increasing ads
The vast majority of money spent on ballot measures is used for advertising.
But Rickert said there is a limit on what can be spent on traditional advertising for campaigns like television or radio.
“Eventually you reach the kind of physical limit of the amount of mail that you can send,” he said. “So campaigns have increasingly turned to these new media sources, like text messages, social media, advertising on the Internet and where we've seen probably the most visible increase for just about everyone is these text messages.”
According to Robokiller, across the country Americans received 15 billion political text messages in 2022, a midterm election year.
Florida ranked fourth for the most political texts in 2022 with 1.09 billion texts.
“Early estimates say that it's going to be about three times as much in 2024,” said Rickert.
Text message ads can be effective, Rickert said because people who receive political texts are generally more likely to vote.
He adds that it is also cost effective.
“Most of these texts ask you for some sort of contribution, and really what we find is they do (raise money) because they're so cheap,” he said. “In general, a single person can send about one thousand of these text messages in an hour, even if one or two people donate $20, it comes out cost effective to send these texts.”
The amount of money a campaign spends on advertising depends on the location and competitiveness of the race, said Rickert.
“Some places like California or Florida are just more expensive to buy airtime,” he said. “The Montana Senate election, which is not a place where it's very expensive to advertise, is the third most expensive Senate race in the country because it has been fairly close the whole time.”
What big spending means for Florida
Although affordable advertising options like texts can mean a bombardment of messages on voters’ phones, Rickets said the money being spent this election shows that people are seeing possibilities in Florida’s ballot measures.
“I think a lot of people who don't live in Florida, might be thinking that spending money on these initiatives could open up opportunities for people that might want to invest in Florida or live here later on,” he said.
However, Rickert said more money does not guarantee the measure will pass or a candidate will win.
“The social science research on whether more money actually leads to electoral success is really murky,” he said. “We tend to find that the campaign that raises the most money and spends the most money tends to win. But that doesn't mean it's the money that's actually causing that victory.”
Rickert explains that popular candidates are more likely to raise more money, “so it could just be that popular candidates win.”
When it comes to election spending, Rickert said there are two types.
“There's spending that happens by the candidates and their candidate committees,” he said. “And then there's what's known as independent expenditures. There aren't the same campaign finance donation limits, nor disclosure requirements about those independent expenditures.”
Rickert said that’s where the concern of ‘Dark Money’ comes in.
“Money where it's not necessarily clear who is spending it, and that's where a lot of the concerns about the amount of money in campaigns comes from.”
He said those concerns are usually found in national races like the Senate.
“We haven't seen as much in these state constitutional amendments, where it has been fairly clear who is supporting either side,” he said.
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