The Cost per Vote

As the amount of money is a factor in elections I believe it is important to see how much each vote has cost each candidate. As you know, I have been tracking the campaign contributions for each of the candidates in the city council races. This has been an ongoing project for me for various political races already so it gives me the opportunity to see the cost per vote as it trends through the different elections.

On March 2014 I shared with you my analysis on the County Judge race in my blog post titled “County Judge Election Analysis.” In that post I shared with you that the cost per vote in 2006 was $7.37 per vote. This is for all of the votes cast in that county election. In 2010, the cost per vote dropped to $2.09. In my post “County Judge Election 2014 by the Numbers” I shared with you Eddie Holguin spent $2 per vote, while Veronica Escobar spent $5 per vote. Aliana Apodaca, on the other hand, spent $14 per vote in 2014 County Election. In Saturday’s city elections, the average cost per vote was $14.24.

I thought you might like to see a comparison of how much each vote cost each individual candidate. Rather than bore you with more words I believe most of you are enjoying the infographics I have been using instead of wordy posts.

Therefore here is an infographic detailing how much each candidate spent for each vote they received. As you can tell is went from a low of 49 cents to high of $36.60 per vote.

As many of you have commented on social media there was an interesting outcome in the Josh Dagda/Cortney Niland race that I believe has sealed the door shot for Niland’s quest for the mayor’s office. I’ll have some commentary on that this afternoon.