Tag Archives: Iowa

There’s been enough of a media circus around the Iowa caucuses and now we go off to New Hampshire. And as you know, money talks as the SuperPACs made clear. But another revealing set of statistics is the direct spending in media advertising per voter by each of the candidates:

• Texas Gov. Rick Perry spent the most per voter. $4.5 million on media for roughly 12,604 votes. That works out to be $357 per vote. No wonder he’s on his way back to the ranch in Texas.
• Ron Paul did well but his $2.7 million in media spending for 26,219 votes works out to be $102 per vote.
• Mitt Romney did significantly better in this regard since he gained almost 30,000 votes for his $1.47 million in media spending. That comes to $49 per vote. But Romney also benefited from the highest SuperPAC spending of all the candidates.
• Gingrich spent $1 million on media for 16,251 votes or $61 per vote.
• But Rick Santorum who surged late and ended only 8 votes shy of beating Romney comes in first for the smallest amount spent per voter. With only $21,980 spent on 29,908 votes he managed to do this for about 73 cents per vote. That’s why all eyes are on him now.

Note that the above numbers cover only traditional paid media and not the SuperPacs or new media spending (which would much more difficult to determine since much of it is largely “in house”). The paid media breakdown along with the Super PAC spending is charted over at Buzzfeed:

Paid Media Spending Breakdown