{"id":2044,"date":"2016-02-10T08:00:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-10T15:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=2044"},"modified":"2016-02-05T01:29:09","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T08:29:09","slug":"jebs-dismal-return-on-investment-in-iowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2016\/02\/10\/jebs-dismal-return-on-investment-in-iowa\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeb&#8217;s Dismal Return on Investment in Iowa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How much should it cost to buy a vote? Not in the direct\u00a0sense, but in terms of how\u00a0campaign expenses incurred stack up against the number of votes received. Take a moment and make a mental guesstimate of a reasonable figure. $20? $200? For Jeb Bush and his Super-PAC, that figure was $2,800 in Iowa: $14.1 million divided by around 5,000 votes received. The runner-up in this ignominious statistic was Mike Huckabee, whose campaign spending amounted to slightly under $1,000 per vote received.\u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/jeb-bush-spent-2800-iowa_us_56b03adee4b0b8d7c2306ec2\">Huffington Post<\/a>\u00a0put together a fascinating comparison of the Republican field on this metric. To see how Jeb stacks up against the competition, click over there. My only real comment is &#8220;Wow.&#8221; Not really at the cost of our elections, though (Jeb&#8217;s\u00a0astronomical cost per vote certainly doesn&#8217;t represent the actual net cost per vote in primary elections). More than anything what surprises me is the amount of funding that can be lined up behind such a seemingly ineffectual campaign.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalcitizen.org\/en\/content\/how-much-did-the-candidates-spend-per-vote-in-iowa\/\"> voting numbers aren&#8217;t tallied <\/a>for the Iowan Democratic caucuses so we can&#8217;t work\u00a0out a similar comparison between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. For what it&#8217;s worth, their total expenditures in Iowa were\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalcitizen.org\/en\/content\/how-much-did-the-candidates-spend-per-vote-in-iowa\/\">$9.4 million and\u00a0$7.4 million<\/a>, respectively. I&#8217;ll keep an eye out for cost per vote\u00a0figures on the Democratic side of things in the near future, though, and post them here when they become available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How much should it cost to buy a vote? Not in the direct\u00a0sense, but in terms of how\u00a0campaign expenses incurred stack up against the number of votes received. Take a moment and make a mental guesstimate of a reasonable figure. $20? $200? For Jeb Bush and his Super-PAC, that figure was $2,800 in Iowa: $14.1 million divided by around 5,000 votes received. The runner-up in this ignominious statistic was Mike Huckabee, whose campaign spending amounted to slightly under $1,000 per vote received.\u00a0The Huffington Post\u00a0put together a fascinating comparison of the Republican field on this metric. To see how Jeb stacks <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2016\/02\/10\/jebs-dismal-return-on-investment-in-iowa\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Jeb&#8217;s Dismal Return on Investment in Iowa<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2047,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2044\/revisions\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}