Lay out 13 years of political funds month by month, and you can see how an election approaches. Three or four months before the vote, lawmakers’ money shifts sharply from routine spending into polling, publicity, and printing. Yet the high point is not election day. It is always three months earlier. The common belief that ‘money flows during the election’ is only half true.
What 13 years reveal when stretched into a single line
Lawmakers must report how they spend political funds to the National Election Commission, and those expenditure records are public. The categories range from everyday items such as office operating costs, staff pay, and meals to voter-facing ones like polling, leaflets, printing, advertising, and text messages. Line up the share of that second cluster, which we call ‘election-related spending,’ month by month from 2012 to 2024, and one rule stands out: it stays relatively stable in ordinary months, then jumps at the same point before elections.
In ordinary times, political funds flow into office operations and meals; election-related spending averages around a quarter of the total. Once an election comes into view, the character of the money changes. Funds for reading the race and getting a name in front of voters move forward in the calendar. This piece follows when that shift begins, and why it seems to vanish in the election month itself.
The high point comes three months out, not on election day
In January 2020, three months before the 21st general election, 58.7% of political funds went to polling, publicity, printing, and text messaging. That is more than double the usual share, about 25%. The same pattern recurs in the January just before the 2016 and 2024 general elections, and in the years leading up to local elections as well. As the chart shows, the share builds as the election approaches, reaches its high point in January, and then drops sharply.
What is intriguing is the timing. The high point comes not on election day but three or four months before the election, while in April, the official campaign period itself, the share falls to as low as 3%. Within a single year, the highest month (January, 59%) and the lowest (April, 3%) sit barely three months apart. By common sense, money should pour out in April, when the vote is imminent. The political-fund ledger moves the other way.
Why April sinks to just 3%
The reason is simple: spending during the campaign period is reported not as political funds but under a separate account called ‘campaign expenses’. The big-ticket items of an official campaign — banners, sound trucks, statutory leaflets — drain into campaign-expense accounting and never appear in the political-funds records we examine. So in the very month the election runs hottest, the ‘share’ of election-related spending within political funds hits bottom.
What remains is the money of the groundwork stage of preparing for an election: the polling that tests whether to run, the printed material and texts that introduce a name and a face before official campaigning begins. The pre-campaign work processed as political funds is what creates the January high point. It sits three months before the April vote not because lawmakers move faster then, but because that is how the accounting partition is drawn.
Not once, but at every election
If this were a one-off in 2020, it would not be a pattern. Rank the months by the share of election-related spending, and the top is filled entirely with the run-up to general elections. First is January 2020, three months before the 21st general election (58.7%), followed by December 2023 (48.2%) and January 2024 (47.3%) ahead of the 22nd, December 2019 (47.4%) just before the 21st, and January 2016 (40.6%) ahead of the 20th.
Not one of the top five months is an ordinary month. They all cluster in the winter, December and January, just before a general election. Three different elections (2016, 2020, 2024) each produced the same shape in the winter before them. This is not the situation of one lawmaker or one party, but the whole Assembly opening its wallet in the same direction at the same time.
A timing gap created by election accounting
Does this pattern mean lawmakers suddenly grow busy right before an election? Not exactly. What the data measures is not lawmakers’ behavior itself, but the accounting box that behavior is labeled into. The fervor of April is real, but that money flows into the campaign-expense account and vanishes from the political-funds statistics. The January high point is not electoral activity itself, but the trace left by preparatory money just before it is reclassified as campaign expense.
This distinction looks small but changes the conclusion. The reading that ‘political funds shrink once the election starts’ is wrong. What shrinks is not the money, but the money captured in this one ledger. The same activity takes a different statistical shape depending on which account it is entered under. The January jump and April collapse reflect the accounting partitions the system has drawn.
The same preparation cycle every four years
In ordinary times, political funds flow into office operating costs and meals. Once an election comes into view, funds concentrate on reading the race through polling and getting a name out through printed materials and text messages. Thirteen years of receipts show that being a lawmaker involves a similar preparation cycle every four years: the winter when the share climbs, the January high point, and the April when the main campaign slips into a separate account.
This pattern breaks a common assumption. People often say ‘money flows during the election,’ but the political-fund ledger reaches its high point three months before it. The same shape appears before the 2016, 2020, and 2024 general elections, which means the cycle is not simply personal choice but a structure created by the rules.
Why look all the way down to the monthly flow of political funds? Disclosed accounting reports are usually consumed only as annual totals, leaving their internal time structure invisible. But spread the same data month by month and the scene hidden by the totals comes into view: when an election is prepared, and which money vanishes from which ledger. Each monthly share shows how politics, as a profession, is prepared and accounted for on a four-year cycle.
Method & source · This is the monthly share by amount, summing the polling, publicity, printing, advertising, and text-messaging categories, based on political-funds accounting reports disclosed by the National Election Commission. This is a separate tally whose scope differs from this site’s map (meal venues). Because official campaign expenses (reported under a separate account at election time) are not included, the peak appears in the ‘preparation period’ just before an election. The figures are full aggregates, and the share is the portion within political-funds expenditure. Data tally · kookrator.