Photograph by Scott Eisen/Bloomberg

Students celebrate after U.S. President Barack Obama was projected the winner of the presidential election inside the Kennedy Forum at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Nov. 6, 2012.

Candidates, parties, political action committees and other outside groups spent more than $7 billion on the 2012 election, according to a final tally by the Federal Election Commission.  That’s the most ever spent on U.S. elections, and surpasses the $5.3 billion spent in 2008.

The presidential candidates spent $1.4 billion while congressional candidates spent $1.8 billion. Political action committees, fueled by the rise of super-PACs that could take in unlimited donations, spent another $2.2 billion.

President Barack Obama and his allies and Republican nominee Mitt Romney and his allies each spent more than $1 billion on the race.

Original post is FEC: 2012 Campaign Cost $7 Billion by Political Capital.

President Barack Obama’s campaign committee, Obama for America, still owes $3.1 million, new Federal Election Commission filings show.

The debts include $626,886 for stage, sound and lighting at campaign events; $500,757 for telemarketing and more than $216,146 for legal fees. The campaign received $1.9 million from the joint fundraising effort with the Democratic National Committee.

Republican rival Mitt Romney reported that his campaign was debt free and he had $872,021 in the bank entering April.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Romney, reported $4.6 million in debts, including $647,519 to himself, $413,370 for security, and $983,072 to the air charter company Moby Dick Airways Ltd.

Original post is Obama Campaign Still Owes $3 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney delivers remarks during the second day of the 40th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on March 15, 2013.

Having failed to win the White House, Mitt Romney is using his leftover campaign funds to help the Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives.

Romney’s joint fundraising committee with the Republican National Committee and state parties contributed $743,704 to the House Republicans’ fundraising arm, according to Federal Election Commission records released today.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was the biggest benefactor of the $1.7 million that the fundraising committee distributed to other party groups. Another $361,721 went to the RNC and $139,083 went to the state party in Massachusetts, where Romney served as governor.

Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, lost to President Barack Obama in November.

The committee still had $1.7 million in the bank as of March 31.

Original post is Romney Gives Excess Campaign Cash to House Republicans by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

President Barack Obama looks over the crowd as he prepares to leave the stage after making an acceptance speech during an election night rally in Chicago on Nov. 7, 2012.

One notable characteristic of the 2012 presidential election was how President Barack Obama ran up big vote margins in large metropolitan areas, overcoming Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s edge in lesser-populated regions.

Obama outran Romney by about 5 million votes despite winning 692 of 3,113 counties or their equivalents, according to official election data compiled and analyzed by Political Capital. Romney won 2,421 counties, or 78 percent of the total, though he carried just seven of the 82 counties that cast at least 300,000 votes. (The data don’t include Alaska, which doesn’t have counties, or the District of Columbia).

Take Nevada, where Obama won by 7 percentage points while carrying just two of 17 counties. One of the two was Clark, which includes Las Vegas and its suburbs and cast 68 percent of the statewide vote. Obama won Clark by 15 points. The other Nevada county Obama won was Washoe, the state’s second-biggest county in and around Reno.

Looking at the disparity another way: Obama won Los Angeles County, California, the nation’s most populous county, by 1,331,570 votes. That margin was greater than Romney’s cumulative vote margin in 1,195 of the counties he carried.

Original post is Obama: 5 Million Vote Win With 22% of Counties by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mitt Romney speaks next wit his sons during the regional Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on October 4, 2012 in Denver, Colorado.

Mitt Romney is finally ready to speak again — in public.

The American Conservative Union announced today that the 2012 Republican presidential nominee will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in mid-March outside Washington, D.C.

“The thousands gathered at CPAC this year are eager to hear from the 2012 GOP presidential candidate at his first public appearance since the elections,” ACU Chairman Al Cardenas said in a statement. “We look forward to hearing Governor Romney’s comments on the current state of affairs in America and the world, and his perspective on the future of the conservative movement.”

In a statement from Romney provided by the group, the former Massachusetts governor said he was looking forward to “saying thank you to the many friends and supporters who were instrumental in helping my campaign.”

The conference will be an early stage test for potential 2016 presidential candidates and others looking to solidify their place among conservatives. Among the others scheduled to address the three-day gathering: Alaska’s Sarah Palin, Florida’s former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky’s Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate and chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Original post is Romney’s Return (To a Public Stage) by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

A voter at a polling station in the Manhattan borough of New York, on Nov. 6, 2012.

So exactly how many votes did President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney receive in the November 2012 election?

It’s still a moving target — more than 90 days after the vote.

That’s because some states have issued amended vote totals, revising the numbers they originally certified a few weeks after the election.

New York election officials released a revised total yesterday, adding more than 8,000 votes, mostly from Suffolk County on Long Island. New York, where more than 7 million votes were cast, first amended its vote totals on Dec. 31, two weeks after electoral votes were cast.

New Jersey issued an amended vote count on Feb. 5, adding 2,315 votes to Obama and subtracting 520 from Romney. Colorado revised its results Jan. 24, adding about 300 votes. Wisconsin amended its totals in late December.

Look for Ohio election officials to post a revision soon. Obama beat Romney by 447,273 to 190,660 in Cuyahoga County in and around Cleveland, according to amended totals that county officials posted Jan. 24. Obama won Cuyahoga by 447,232 to 190,651, according to a document Ohio election officials posted in December.

For those of you keeping score at home, Political Capital’s nationwide vote tally at the moment has Obama with 65,907,124 votes and Romney with 60,931,731 votes.

Subject to revision, of course.

Original post is Obama, Romney Votes Trickling In — Still a 5-Million Margin for Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Win McNamee/Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain holds up a cupcake decorated with his 9-9-9 economic plan before a speech at the National Press Club in this file photo.

One legacy of the 2012 presidential race: the super-political action committees it spawned.

Weeks after the Nov. 6 election, those groups still had more than $5.4 million left to spend, Federal Election Commission reports due yesterday show.

Each candidate — from President Barack Obama to short-lived Republican contender Rick Perry — got an assist from at least one specially designed super-PAC, often staffed with former aides to that presidential hopeful.

New to the presidential race last year, super-PACs could accept unlimited sums from wealthy individuals, corporations and unions and spend the money directly helping their candidate of choice, so long as they didn’t coordinate with the candidate.

Priorities USA Action, organized to help the president win re-election, had $3.7 million at the end of December. What will the super-PAC do with the leftover cash? A representative for Priorities couldn’t immediately be reached.

Restore Our Future, created to boost Republican challenger Mitt Romney, had $1.3 million in the bank. Brittany Gross, a spokeswoman for Restore, said in an e-mail the group is “not discussing future plans at this point.”

Far older super-PAC corpses — from the Republican primary race that concluded some nine months ago — still litter the field.

Winning Our Future, which helped Newt Gingrich stay in the Republican race months after his own campaign coffers dwindled, had $60,283. (The super-PAC finally stopped paying its consultant-founder, Rebecca Burkett, last month.)

Perry ally Make Us Great Again had $216,161 as of Dec. 31. Rick Santorum-backing Red, White and Blue Fund, had $127,063. Our Destiny, funded largely by onetime candidate Jon Huntsman’s father, had $20,209 cash on hand.

The pro-Herman Cain 9-9-9 Fund was down to its last $100 but owes $162,000 to a fundraising company. The Georgia businessman, who promised to balance the federal budget in less than a year, would not be pleased.

Original post is Super-PACs Still Super With $5.4 Mln — Though `9-9-9′ Down to Last $100 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Secret service agents and police officers stand outside a Democratic caucus meeting room with Vice President Joe Biden at the Capitol.

John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable and a Republican former governor of Michigan, says he thinks Congress can find a way to lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent without sacrificing revenue.

The problem: Getting members of Congress to let go of their ‘kids.”

Every tax deduction “has got a father or a mother over there in the Congress looking after their child,” Engler said at a lunch today in Washington, where the association of chief executives of large corporations is based. “You’ve got to go round up all the kids here and see if there’s enough to pay for it.”

The 200-member association says every tax credit or deduction should be “on the table” for review in order to get the overall rate down, Engler said. The top corporate tax rate is 35 percent.

At the lunch, where the Business Roundtable announced its legislative priorities for the year, Engler noted that President Barack Obama is amenable to corporate tax reform — something his defeated Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, had mentioned frequently as a priority during the campaign.

When Obama spoke to the Business Roundtable CEOs in December, Engler said, the president “impressed” them “because he reaffirmed his support for corporate tax reform.” Obama also “acknowledged the importance of dealing with the territorial system,” Engler said.

Such a system would largely exempt U.S. companies from paying taxes on profits they make outside the country.

“There were no specifics, but a favorable impression was left by the president on the comprehensive tax reform topic,” Engler said.

A White House official said today that Obama wants to encourage domestic investment and doesn’t believe that a pure territorial system is the best way to do so. The official said Obama wants to overhaul the corporate tax structure in a way that helps U.S. businesses compete around the world.

Obama’s budgets have all included proposals that would move the international tax code in the opposite direction from territoriality, making it harder for companies to defer paying U.S. taxes on income earned outside the country.

With the more immediate fiscal issues of sequestration and the debt ceiling looming, neither Obama nor Congress is likely to push for any major tax-code changes in the first half of the year, Engler added

With assistance from Richard Rubin.

Original post is Congressional Parents Protective of Tax Exemption ‘Kids,’ Engler Says by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

The AT&T Mobility booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

AT&T Inc., the largest U.S. phone company, gave $3.1 million to President Barack Obama’s inaugural committee at a time when the federal government is deciding how to auction airwaves coveted by the Dallas-based wireless provider.

The president’s  inaugural committee, in a reversal of the policy of four years ago, has declined to identify the amounts of donations in advance of its report to the Federal Election Commission. The AT&T contribution, including $123,061 of in-kind communications services, was disclosed in a separate report to Congress.

Also in a reversal of its policy of four years ago, the Obama inaugural committee agreed to take corporate donations and did not set a maximum contribution limit.

Obama’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, supports setting aside some spectrum for wifi. That would result in fewer available airwaves for companies like AT&T.

Opposition from the FCC and the Obama Justice Department helped scuttle plans by AT&T to merge with T-Mobile Inc. The company’s political action committee later contributed $5,000 to the campaign of Obama’s Republican opponent, Mitt Romney.

Original post is AT&T Dials Up More Than $3 Million for Obama Inauguration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Shantrese Davis, from New Orleans, Louisiana, on the National Mall during the U.S. presidential inauguration in Washington on Jan. 21, 2013.

That’s the percentage-point gap between the Democratic and Republican approval ratings of President Barack Obama last year, according to Gallup.

Obama’s average approval rating in 2012 was 86 percent among Democrats and 10 percent among Republicans. The 76-point gap ties George W. Bush’s fourth year in 2004 “as the most polarized years” in Gallup records, the polling organization said in a written analysis yesterday.

“The election year likely causes Americans to view the president in more partisan terms, given his involvement in campaigning that year as well as the presence of an active opponent from the other party who is trying to defeat him,” Gallup’s  Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in an analysis of the numbers.

In November 2004, Bush defeated Democratic nominee John Kerry by 286 to 251 in the Electoral College and by 50.7 percent to 48.3 percent in the national popular vote tally. In November 2012, Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 332 to 206 in the Electoral College and by 51.1 percent to 47.2 percent in the popular vote.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 76 by Political Capital.