Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Costly Election

If you take the dollars spent on this election:

Congressional Elections: Missouri District 07 Race: 2010 Cycle - OpenSecrets.org

and divide by the votes:

State Of Missouri - U.S. Representative - District 7 - Summary - MO Secretary of State

you get the cost paid per vote:

Billy Long      = $7.13 per vote
Scott Eckersley = $3.01 per vote
Kevin Craig = $0.02 per vote
I went to a government-run school, so I admit I can't do math. My only campaign cost was gas to get to the debates.

I'm quite happy I passed the 10,000 vote mark. I didn't do as well as the KOLR poll suggested, but still did very well for a Libertarian in a hotly-contested three-way race.

If I could have convinced an additional 70,131 Republicans to abandon the GOP and vote Libertarian, I could have won this election. But that would have cost me around $2,000 dollars (at my present rate of campaign efficiency).

I feel sorry for Scott Eckersley, who seems like a nice guy, but raised possibly a quarter of a million dollars and got fewer votes than Jack Truman did in 2006. I never saw Truman during the entire campaign. I don't know if he campaigned at all. He didn't spend much, if anything. This is why the Democrat Party never spends any money in this district.

1 comment:

Kevin Craig said...

Latest on campaign costs from the Springfield News-Leader (News-Leader.com):

In the 7th Congressional District, Republican Rep.-elect Billy Long raised and spent about $1.2 million to win his race. He loaned his campaign $42,000 in August and paid it back in full two months later.

Democrat Scott Eckersley raised $231,745 and spent $183,222. Eckersley ended the campaign without paying himself back the $100,000 that he loaned his campaign in June.

Hartzler racked up debt to beat Skelton

So my calculator says Billy Long spent $8.51 per vote.