The four candidates for the Republican presidential nomination had eleven states to compete in during the 3/6/12 marquee electoral event known as Super Tuesday. They employed various strategies – and one of the stategies employed by Mitt Romney and supporting PACs was free spending. But on a per-delegate-one basis, he was not the biggest spender.
A report on Super Tuesday spending and results was assembled by Huffington Post based on NBC First Read spending statistics. The aggregate total amount spent on television advertising by the quartet and their proxies was pegged at about $12M.
The well-heeled Romney campaign and the equally-well-heeled Restore Our Future super PAC led the way in spending, dropping a $7.567M money bomb on the electorate that was in play. Romney came away with 208 delegates, placing his dollar-per-delegate total at $36,360.58.
Newt Gingrich and supporting PAC Winning Our Future picked up 72 delegates on $2.775M worth of advertising, getting even less bang for its buck than did Romney with a cost-per-delegate of $38,541.69
The frugal Rick Santorum campaign and its PAC friend, the Red White And Blue Fund, spent $1.596M, most of which was said to be directed at voters in Ohio. Santorum picked up 84 delegates, getting twice as much bang for his buck as Gingrich at $19K per delegate.
Ron Paul and supporting PAC Endorse Liberty held their fire for the most part, spending a tiny fraction of the money spent by the other candidates. The total: $102K. That was enough to score 21 delegates, at a cost of only $4,857.14 per delegate.
