Between the 1860 election and the introduction of public financing in 1976, candidates for president spent a combined $332 million on their campaigns, according to data from the 1984 edition of "Financing Politics" by Herbert Alexander.
That's a little more than one-third of $889 million, a.k.a. the amount that the Koch brothers' network of organizations aims to spend in 2016 alone.
Those values are un-adjusted, of course. If you convert those past elections into 2014 dollars, the Kochs plan only to outspend the combined elections of 1860 and 1864 and 1868 and 1872 and 1876 and 1880 and 1884 and 1888 and 1892 and 1896 and 1900 and 1904 and 1908 and 1912 and 1916. No other campaign over that span cost $889 million in 2014 dollars.
The amount is also more than was raised by either President Obama or Mitt Romney in 2012. It is more than was raised by Obama in 2008, as well, even once you adjust it for 2014 dollars. (John McCain raised far less that year.)
It is also $300 million more than all of the outside spending in 2012, for and against all candidates, in the primary and the general elections.
It is more than every single candidate for the Senate in 2014 spent, combined. Same for 2012, 2010, 2008, and back through history.
It is $40 million shy of what was spent by every candidate for the House last year, winning and losing, in each of the 435 House seats. That amount could have paid for all spending for all Republican House candidates last year and still had enough left over to pay for all of the spending by Republican Senate candidates, too.
If the Kochs decided to blow all of that money on a Super Bowl ad on Sunday instead of the 2016 campaign, they could run a spot that ran for 99 minutes (at the reported rate of $4.5 million for 30 seconds). That's longer than the game itself. (In terms of gameplay.)
It is also, though, an amount that falls within the range of what the Kochs vast holdings gain or lose on the stock market in a single 24-hour period.
