How Much It Cost To Run For President In The US From 1980 To 2020, Visualized

Running for the most powerful office in the world is going to cost you. With the entrance of billionaire Michael Bloomberg — who has already spent $31 million in TV ads —into the Democratic primary race, it seems clear the 2020 presidential election will cost more money than any previous referendum in American history.

HowMuch.net, a personal finance site, scoured stats from the Federal Election Commission and the Bureau of Labor Statistics and created an infographic showing how much the US presidential elections have cost each time, from 1980 to 2020. Click here for the full-sized image.

Some key takeaways from this data are that Democrats have outspent Republicans in the past five US presidential election cycles — with Barack Obama's 2008 run costing the most overall at $1.3 billion.

The 2016 US election also demonstrated that the biggest spender doesn't guarantee victory: Hillary Clinton raised nearly two times as much as Donald Trump in 2016 and still came up short.

[Read more at HowMuch]