For convenience, STATES, TERRITORIES, and STATES_AND_TERRITORIES can be accessed directly from the us module: >>> us.states.STATES [<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,... >>> us.STATES [<State:Alabama>, <State:Alaska>, <State:Arizona>, <State:Arkansas>,...
WITH nearly every American election cycle new spending records are broken. This autumn's midterm elections are nearly nine months away, but already candidates in Kentucky's Senate race have raised $19.4m and spent $7.3m. In the 2012 cycle candidates in the Massachusetts Senate race alone spent over $85m. That is small change compared with that year's presidential contest, in which $2 billion was spent (the total cost of the 2012 elections, including congressional races, topped $7 billion).
Anyone wanting to run for president needs to be wealthy, or at least able to access a lot of funding during the campaign. Candidates generally spend hundreds of millions of US Dollars (USD) in the first few months of campaigning alone, and an entire campaign can cost between $700 million and $1 billion USD.