is. you say they do matter, just not nearly as much as people think? that s right. what we are saying here you have two well matched candidatings. each have a billion dollars to spend. in some sense, their respective campaigns are can selling the effects of the other out. so in some sense the campaigns are mattering both are mattering at the same time in the same way. that makes it hard for either tore get that advantage. if you want to go to other kind of campaigns, back to the presidential primaries, for example, down the ballot to state legislative races. those are the kind of races i think you can see campaign evenlgs much more clearly. in some sense, we spend time in general elections looking in the least likely game changes. i want to talk about how this affects all races. let s start with 2012, a common point of a discussion to understand what did and didn t matter from your perspective and everybody else s perspective here, let s take probably the highest profile. i have