They failed to 'buy' the US election in 2012: will conservative donors ever open their wallets again? The unrelentingly negative air campaign was directly related to these stealth bombers. Some 88 per cent of the television ads in this election were negative, and four-fifths of those negative ads were attacks on Democrats, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. After all, why spend dark money on positive ads? The whole point is plausible deniability. The imbalance was astounding. From late October, $75 million in undisclosed dark money had been deployed against Obama, while just $1 million was spent by outside groups to run positive ads in his defence. Romney saw the opposite dynamic on his behalf, albeit on a smaller scale: $5 million of such money was spent to attack him, while $8.8 million was spent on positive ads presenting him as the saviour of the economy. The dark money trickled down to swing state Senate races as well. In Virginia, Democrat Tim Kaine saw at least $11 million in outside ads directed against him, compared with just $11,000 in support. In Ohio, Democrat incumbent Sherrod Brown was attacked with $9.7 million in negative electioneering compared with just $100,000 in support. Let's be honest - this wasn't just an attempt to tip the scales in Republicans" favour. It was perilously close to an attempt to buy the election. But here's the good news: it didn't work. President Obama won all the swing states except North Carolina, and swing state Democratic Senate candidates swept in as well. On election day, conservative consultants were busy calling their donors, assuring them that a Romney wave was on its way despite the polls, and praying their cheques would clear before the final results were in. As day turned to night, their calls tapered off as the feverish spin gave way to actual vote counting. And so now comes the accounting and accusations. The creation of a partisan Super PAC economy created a gold rush for consultants during this election cycle - "the greatest windfall that ever happened for political operatives in American history" is how Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf described it to me. They got rich, but Republicans didn't win. Karl Rove's Crossroads empire spent at least $175 million of donors" money to defeat Democrats and failed. What's unclear is whether ideological billionaires will be willing to indulge these conservative con-jobs in the future. Now is a time of recrimination and reflection for the Republican Party. Attempts to demonise the president did not work and the onslaught of negative ads backfired: exit polls showed Obama won the support of moderate voters by a 16 per cent margin over Romney. At the very least, this election showed there is a saturation point at which most voters tune out from unhinged attacks. If this attempt to buy the election had proved successful, the precedent would have led to further escalation and degradation of our democracy. Instead, there is an opportunity for a reset of campaign finance regulations as well as strategy. Election 2012 provides this welcome lesson: dark money doesn't always work and the positive can beat the negative in the end. John Avlon is senior columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast