Money does not necessarily cause a candidate to win an election,but.....

There is always a debate on the role of money in the Ghanaian politics and similarly how the wealthy or rich politicians impact the political platforms. Politicians who are rich always find it easy to spend or mobilise resources for campaigns. They also attract useful supporters who are merely interested in pecuniary benefits and not moved by the deep sense of loyalty or any conviction in party ideologies.

Sometimes, there is a thread of thought that wealth brings success in politics. However, a debate has always played out around the world with regard to the success rate of the wealthy or rich people politics.

In developed countries such as in Europe and the United States of America (USA), political scholars have been trying to understand how rich people’s money has impacted on the political terrain of various countries.

In the US, many voters have expressed their depressing thoughts fearing that money is killing their democracy while in Britain, campaign spending is tightly regulated but worse still the total figures invested in campaigns are always worrisome.

For instance in the 2010 election in Britain, there was a total registered voters of 45.6 million and about $54.3 million was spent. Further, a casual scan down the election spending for various states shows that the seventh costliest Senate race cost more than the entire 2010 general election in Britain.

The Americans voters are further worried that public faith in democracy is being undermined by vast sums of corrupting money and there is a prevailing suspicion that elected representatives are essentially bought and paid for by wealthy special interests.

According to a research l conducted, there were interesting findings on the impact that money from the wealthy and rich politicians have on an election.

The research found that when a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote.

It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So l am talking about really,large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.

What my study suggests is that money doesn’t necessarily cause a candidate to win but, rather, that the kind of candidate who’s attractive to voters also ends up attracting a lot of money.

And it doesn’t seem as if money really causes electoral victories either, at least not nearly to the extent that the conventional wisdom says.

There are a number of Ghanaian politicians who were wealthy but their money could not tilt the balance of power in their favour.

Ibrahim Hardi,contact,0208235615,Email;bigkolaaya@yahoo.com