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Presidential candidates spend big in Iowa ahead of caucuses

It’s showtime in Iowa. The race to the White House officially gets underway in the Hawkeye State as Republican and Democratic caucuses are called to order in 1,681 precincts across the state.  It's the first major electoral event of the nominating process for president of the United States.

Iowa's population of 3.1 million earns the state six of the 270 electoral votes it takes to win the presidential election. Despite Iowa making up a tiny fraction of America's voters, the Iowa caucus has a big impact on the election process, in part because it happens first.

With so much at stake with the campaign's first vote, candidates have ramped up their spending in Iowa to garner more support.

More than $70 million has been spent on advertisements in Iowa for presidential candidates. That’s according to SMG Delta, as reported by NBC News.

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Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is Iowa's biggest spender. The pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise has spent nearly $15 million to help him break out of the single digits in the state.

Coming in second is Marco Rubio, who has spent approximately $12 million.

For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is leading the pack. Clinton’s campaign has spent more than $9 million in the state, followed by Bernie Sanders’ $7.4 million push.

The groups responsible for a large portion of the spending are super PACs. In a recent report from the Wesleyan Media Project, super PACs have sponsored 81% of the TV ads in the GOP presidential primaries, a 12,000% jump over 2007. But that shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise, since many of these groups are swimming in cash, with millions of dollars flooding into the presidential campaign over the past six months.

On January 31, candidates and their super PACs filed reports with the Federal Election Commission on their finances through the end of the year.

Leading the group for Republicans and Democrats is Clinton, who has raised $163.5 million so far.

Bush ranks second, having raised a total of $155.6 million.

The Iowa caucuses start at 7 p.m. local time on Monday.