Eric Zuesse – America’s Oligarchs Support Clinton Almost Unanimously

The results are already in, even before the official campaign-finance final figures will become available after the election.

Though a large percentage of the people funding the campaign advertising will never be made public — due to recent Supreme Court decisions allowing “dark money” — data already exist on the final product of the campaigns (including both the above-board and the dark money), which is the booked advertising time for each of the two candidates at the start of their campaigns. (Similar proportions of donations go also to get-out-the-vote and other campaign-activities; so, these booked-advertising figures correlate rather well with across-the-board funding of the two campaigns.)

Advertising rates — the charges per second of air-time — get higher and higher the later and closer to Election Day the time is booked; so, any candidate who books late is really starved for funds and has little chance of winning; any candidate who does the booking early is getting a big break from the networks and from certain other media. This discount, for early booking, magnifies even furtherthe cash-advantage of the candidate whom the oligarchs prefer.

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