April 26, 2012

To Win The GOP Primary, Mitt Romney Spent $18.50 Per Vote

Mitt Romney

With Gingrich and Santorum out, Mitt Romney is the inevitable Republican presidential nominee. Victory is sweet, but it hasn’t come cheap for the candidate, who has spent a whopping $18.50 per primary vote he received. His campaign alone spent a total of $76.6 million for 4.1 million votes.

CNN reports that the money was used on everything from hotels to advertising:

For instance, in March, the campaign spent $871 on Poland Spring water, $1,966 on office supplies from Apple (AAPLFortune 500), more than $50 at Applebee’s, $48 at Arby’s, $9.57 at Panda Express, $11,000 in payments to the Waldorf Astoria hotel and $70,165 at law and lobbying firm Patton Boggs.

That total doesn’t include super PAC money. Super PACs, the noncampaign organizations that can raise and spend unlimited amounts on elections, brought overall spending on Romney’s behalf to $122 million, meaning his cost-per-vote was just under $30.