With $1 Billion, the Costliest Primaries Campaigns Ever

United States will have its new President after 276 days from now. This time the US Election process is also establishing new records with the levels of expenditures in the primaries across the countries. The election is still 276 days ahead but all the previous records have already been broken.
A historical announcement made by Barack Obama for having raised $32 million in the month of January alone. It now becomes the largest amount that was collected in one month’s period ever.
John McCain is now getting $1 million every day as donations. His campaign had gone bankrupt almost during the last summer. Mitt Romney, his main competitor, with his owned wealth of $250 million, has already done with $35.4 million as expenditure on his election campaigns.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor though has withdrawn from the Republican race on Wednesday, was able to collect $61.4-million in 2007 to run his primary campaigns. Ron Paul, another Republican aspirant who is enjoying a heavy internet support, could manage almost $20 million during the last quarter of 2007.
Democratic and the Republican parties, taken together, will be spending somewhere around $1 billion by the end of the primaries. Expenditures made by the national committees and other supporting groups for each of these two parties would be in addition to this expected amount of $1 billion. Some political analysts believe that the total expenditure on the US Presidential elections would be to the tune of around $3 billion.
Fundraising campaigns, till now, have swung in favor of the Democratic Party compared to the Republicans. Hillary Clinton could collect $118 million and Barack Obama Could collect $103 million in the year 2007 alone. John Edwards, before his withdrawing, collected almost 430.3 million in the same period. John McCain’s collection of last year was $42.1 million.
Getting on to the lower ends, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, could collect just $9 million. Most of the money, nearly $6.6 million got accumulated in the last three months of the year when his election campaign started gaining ground in Iowa. His collection for 2007 was only $1.9 million.
The collections may seem exorbitant but the levels of expenditures are no less exorbitant either. Some of campaigns are going neck to neck despite this huge collection.
With reference to the data filed yesterday with the U.S. Federal Election Commission, by the end of the year 2007, Hillary Clinton was having only $18 million on hand while Barack Obama was left with just $13 million. Immediately after the winning of New Hampshire primary, Hillary Clinton could raise $1 million as donations only through her email appeals.Barack Obama also gained with almost 170,000 new donors in January and his total donors are getting close to 650,000 in numbers.
Existing US laws permit for a maximum of $2,300 that an individual donor can contribute. Hillary Clinton’s donors come from small pool of wealthier people while barrack Obama’s contributors generally hail from the $100 range of people.
Other candidates are also running specified campaigns to collect more amounts through donations from the contributors.