How Much Do Votes Cost?

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With the dust now settled on the recent Feltham and Heston by-election it is interesting to look at not only how many votes each party received, but how much each party spent on the election.

Once you know just how much each party spent on the election it is interesting to use those figures to work out just how much each vote cost. In parliamentary by-elections the spending limit is £100,000. That's a lot of money, and certainly more than the English Democrats spent! We spent roughly £1,200 on fighting the seat – the cost of our glossy leaflets.

Sadly however although Royal Mail claimed that 95% of the constituency was covered with the leaflets, none of our local activists, members or supporters reported receiving any. This leads us to believe that delivery was at best patchy and far less than the coverage we would have hoped for.

In these big one-off parliamentary contests it's almost always the case that the 'big three' spend the maximum amount allowed. That is also the case with UKIP, who have put tremendous amounts of money into recent by-elections. Rather disappointingly for them they failed to come even third this time, despite their large spend.

UKIP, who were riding the crest of a wave of anti-EU popularity, have now taken a huge dip in opinion polls thanks to David Cameron's new 'tough' stance on the proposed new European treaty. This simply goes to show the inherent weakness in being a one issue party. UKIP's votes cost the most at over $78 per vote.

The Lib Dems are also a party who are in a state of decline. With many of their voters returning to the Labour fold due to discontent with the current coalition government, the Lib Dems only narrowly scrapped third place after a whooping £73.31 per vote.

Another party who are in decline is the BNP. They put in a large effort and spent a significant sum of money. Their 'Truth Truck' (a dilapidated advertising lorry) was seen chugging it's way around the constituency each day running up huge costs in diesel. Despite the effort their vote fell considerably from the last general election. Their vote collapsed from 1714 in May 2010 to just 540, despite their large spend and national mobilizations.

The big winner was obviously Labour, not only did their share of the vote rise by over 10%, but they had a low spend per vote, less than £8. The Tories didn't fare too poorly either considering how unpopular the coalition government is in certain areas. The Conservative vote was probably boosted by the current support that Cameron is enjoying from the tabloid press.

Happily though, despite the problems the English Democrats encountered with non-delivery of our election material, our spend per vote was the lowest in the election.

Party/Vote/Percentage - Total Spend - Cost Per Vote

Labour – 12,639 votes (54.4%) - £100,000 - £7.91
Conservative – 6,436 votes (27.7%) - £100,000 - £15.54
Liberal Democrats – 1,364 votes (5.9%) - £100,000 - £73.31
UKIP – 1,276 votes (5.5%) - £100,000 - £78.37
BNP – 540 votes (2.3%) - £5,000 - £9.26
Green – 426 votes (1.8%) - £3,000 - £7.04
English Democrats (Roger Cooper) – 322 votes (1.4%) - £1,200 - £3.73
London People Before Profit – 128 votes (0.6%) - £500 - £3.91
Bus-Pass Elvis Party – 93 votes (0.4%) - £500 - £5.38

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Interesting Comparison

An interesting analysis. Better to be a new party whom most people know little about and receive 1.4% of the vote than an old party which is a household name and still only receives 2.3% depite spending nearly 3 times the budget of the English Democrats.

Manxman , December 24, 2011

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Interesting Comparison

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