An interesting side note to the 2015 federal election in these parts is the candidate expenditures. These have to be reported, and are accordingly presented along with the vote totals in online sources. Arnold Viersen, the winner of that contest out-spent all his opponents by a wide margin. Chances are – sentiment being what it was at the time (and likely still is) – he could have gotten elected without spending a penny. Then he (or the constituency association) would be $74,852 better off. Had they invested that amount, they’d be in really good shape going into this year’s contest.

But let’s do a bit of arithmetic, just for fun. According to the figures in the Wikipedia article, Viersen’s 74.8 thousand bucks bought him 34,342 votes, or about two votes per dollar spent. Second-place finisher Cameron Alexis of the NDP spent $10,844 and got 7,127 votes. That’s about $1.50 per vote.

Liberal candidate Christopher Brown’s campaign shelled out $6,504, which was just over $1 per vote (6,360 of them). Moving on, the Libertarian candidate’s bare-bones campaign earned him 443 votes, at the cost of $108.02. That’s a bang-for-the-buck ratio of four to one, making it a very efficient campaign compared to all of the above.

Finally, Green party candidate Sabrina Lee Levac spent zero on her campaign, yet picked up 1,247 votes. Now that’s bang for your buck – a ratio so good it can’t even be calculated.