Cost for votes

Andrew Cuomo spent almost 40 times as much for his votes as Zephyr Teachout

By Philip Bump

Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has been raising money for his reelection essentially since he took office in 2010. His campaign account has been in the eight figures since 2012; he's been raising $5 million or more every six months like clockwork. In Tuesday's New York Democratic gubernatorial primary, he won by a healthy margin, against a candidate who didn't raise much at all.

But it cost him.

We were inspired to crunch the numbers on how much Cuomo laid out as compared to what Teachout spent out by a tweet from the New York Times' Nick Confessore. "I wonder what a dollars per vote metric would show on Cuomo-Teachout and Hochul-Wu," he asked.

The short answer is: Cuomo spent $60.62 for each of his votes. Teachout spent $1.57.

Now the long answer. In his final report to the New York Board of Elections, Cuomo reported having $30.5 million in the bank. Since 2011, he's spent almost $20 million on his race; according to reports filed in 2014, he's spent about $14 million of that over the last 12 months. Teachout, by contrast, raised about $600,000 and spent $283,000. (As of 11 days before the election; candidates report final numbers next week.)

Cuomo earned 327,150 votes, according to the most recent data from the AP. Teachout got 180,336. Giving us the following, depending on if you want to count Cuomo's 2012 spending.

Candidate	Spent	Votes	Cost per vote
Cuomo (since 2011)	$19,832,556.         23	327,150	$60.62
Cuomo (2014)	$13,950,067.32	327,150	$42.64
Teachout	$283,918.51	180,336	$1.57

If you don't have a calculator handy, that means that Cuomo spent 38.5 times as much on each of his votes as Zephyr Teachout. If he'd gotten the same return on investment as she did for his $19 million, he'd have gotten 12.6 million votes -- more than enough to guarantee a win, and about two-thirds of the population of the entire state.