At National Journal, Major Garrett does the math:
The Paul math goes like this: According to his latest filing with the Federal Election Commission, Paul has spent $32,766,465. He's received 1,079,753 votes for a cost-per-vote total of $30.35. He's won 66 delegates for a cost-per-delegate total of $496,461.
Doug Wead, a senior Paul adviser offered the following:
"The delegate counts, such as those promoted by the New York Times and The Associated Press are pure media fiction. So your delegate-per-dollar is skewed. For example, they (NYT and AP) say the delegate count in Iowa is Santorum 14, Romney 12 and Paul 1. We have one delegate in Iowa? Hmm. I don't want to reveal too much, but our delegate strategy is doing just fine and it is worth every dollar."
Maybe so. But the raw numbers based on available delegate counts don't look good for Paul.
Romney's cost-per-vote (CPV) total is $16.18. His cost-per-delegate (CPD) is $118,218.
The math: $66,793,395 spent with 4,127,917 votes and 565 delegates.
Santorum's CPV is an amazing $4.56 cents. That's just over a quarter of Romney's and about a seventh of Paul's.
Santorum's CPD is $50,873.
He's spent $13,023,588 and won 2,850,546 votes and 256 delegates. Imagine if Romney or Paul were this efficient? Imagine if the federal government or a private business was this efficient?
