Out of curiosity I went back to the 2020 Republican Primary for Georgia’s 7th district and compared each candidate’s vote toals with their latest campaign finance report. I looked at total money outlay for each person, not at what they spent in operating expenses, so some of the money might have gone for things not directly related to courting voters. I wanted to see how closely money spent tracked votes received.

Turns out with one exception the candidate that spent the most money received the most votes, but the percent of the total dollars ($3.6 million) did not match the percent of the total votes cast (62,328). I then let Excel compute the cost per vote, and by that comparison Zach Kennemore came out way ahead, picking up 1,155 votes and not spending any money. The candidate who ‘paid’ the most for each vote received was Lynne Homrich, with a cost of $214 per vote.

Here are the totals:

CandidateVotesPercent of Total VoteMoney SpentPercent of Total SpentDollars/vote
Rich McCormick34,35855.1%$1,044,14928.6%$30.39
Renee Unterman10,93017.5%$1,036,07728.4%$94.79
Mark Gonsalves4,5107.2%$495,33013.6%$109.83
Lynne Homrich4,4127.1%$943,81025.9%$213.92
Eugene Yu3,7346.0%$119,3743.3%$31.97
Lisa Babbage3,2295.2%$7,0610.2%$2.19
Zachary Kennemore1,1551.9%$00.0%$0.00

By admin