Topic: Election 2008
How Much Is Your Vote Worth? All six presidential candidates are spending money to get our votes--find out how much is it costing them.by Bradley Jansen
(libertarian)
Thursday, October 9, 2008
How Much Is Your Vote Worth?
Money talks in politics. Some say it is the lifeblood of politics. How much do Democrat Barack Obama, Republican John McCain, independent Ralph Nader, Libertarian Bob Barr, Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin have to spend for each vote they get? How financially committed are their supporters? This column answers those questions. Yesterday's summary of the analysis of the polls in the race is here.
Of course, only the two major party candidates are on all state ballots this year. Bob Barr came close reaching nearly 96% of Americans (court cases pending). Therefore I examined how much money a candidate has raised and compared it with the percentage of Americans who can vote for each candidate qualified on enough state ballots to get a majority of the electoral college. The first column lists the candidates name with a link to the end-August FEC report. The second column is the total amount of money the candidate raised. Next one is the amount of money raised from individuals (ie, not PACs, etc.) followed by how much money the campaign has spent. The estimated vote totals come from my previous candidate-specific analyses for the minor parties (linked in their names above) or the RCP average for the two major party candidates.
The next three columns are calculations of how much money one has raised per supporter (if every likely voter for each candidate had contributed and averaged out). This column is an indication of voter intensity with the huge caveat that there is little confidence in the vote estimate numbers for McKinney and especially for Baldwin given the relative dearth of hard polling numbers to make an estimate. The next column is also the amount of money raised per supporter but only considers donations from individuals which substantially affects the numbers for Messrs. Obama, McCain and Nader. This column is a truer reflection of the amount of voter intensity (with the same caveats for McKinney and especially Baldwin).
The final column on the right is the amount of dollars each candidate has spent to per likely voter. By these numbers Cynthia McKinney is running the most fiscally responsible campaign and Barack Obama is the most spendthrift. Obama was spending, at the end of August, significantly more per vote of support than John McCain. Only Chuck Baldwin spends over a dollar per vote among the minor party candidates.
I expect these numbers to change when the new FEC campaign finance reports come in for September and as the vote predictions are updated by looking at the October polling numbers. Obama will certainly be spending more money--a lot more money, but his rising poll numbers might keep the per voter cost down. The dramatic decline in support for McCain--coupled with the spending limitations he accepted with the public financing of his bill enacted into law--should raise his spending to vote ratio. I am not sure how Nader's figures will change. Similar to Obama, Barr's polling numbers and donations have increased so the cost per vote ratio change is difficult to predict, but we can say he is running the most efficient campaign after McKinney at this point. Most recent polling indicates a drop in support for McKinney (which will increase her spending to voter ratio) and a still statistically difficult to measure support for Baldwin.
J. Bradley Jansen was a legislative staffer for U.S. Congressman Ron Paul from 1997-2001. He is director of the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights of the Liberty and Privacy Network (but views expressed here are his own), which is part of Bob Barr’s Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances.
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The views expressed in this
article are those of Bradley Jansen only and do not represent
the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Bradley Jansen is
solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an
employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
This election could be shut down on November 4th by having voters walk into voting boths and just taking their sweet time voting even if their sweet time is all day. Your candidate isn't on the ballot then shut the booth down!
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