The Kentucky Republican nomination for its U.S. Senate seat is a highly competitive race with national focus. In it we are seeing an intra-Republican party fight highlighting the feud between the establishment Republican Party (embodied by Secretary of State Trey Grayson) and outsider Tea-party candidate Rand Paul (the son of US Congressman Ron Paul). As you can see in an earlier post Grayson and Paul are involved in a fight and spending left and right to see who runs the Grand Old Party. The candidates have spent a combined total of $1.7 million in a two month campaign. We at Smart Media Group are left with one big question. Who is buying more effectively?

To determine this we’ve a simple marginal cost analysis to see who is paying the least amount of money per point they gain in the polls, and how much will they have to spend to cross the finish line and reach that 50 plus one margin of victory.

The answer is Rand Paul. Paul has paid a total of $149k per polling point during the month of March. Grayson on the other hand was paying $198k per polling point during the month of March. This means that not only is Paul buying more effectively than Secretary Grayson, it also means that with his current lead in the polls Paul’s total price to victory would be $746k (well within his current Cash on Hand) compared to Grayson’s whopping $3.9 million dollars (or 3 times his total Cash on Hand at the end of the Quarter).

The 2010 Illinois Democratic Primary for Governor was expensive, competitive, and downright nasty. Together, Governor Quinn and Comptroller Hynes spent almost $8.5 million dollars on television advertising over the course of four months. At the start of the campaign (in August of 2009), Hynes was polling 28 points down on incumbent governor Pat Quinn. By January 26 (the last public poll of the campaign) Comptroller Hynes was leading Governor Quinn by 1 point, and would go onto lose the race by that very margin.

In the intervening months, Hynes spent 4 million dollars, introduced himself to the voters, and engaged in a negative ad war with Governor Quinn. On January 16, 2010 Hynes registered a shock he was for the first time polling within four points of Governor Quinn. In the period between the last public poll (12/8/09) and the January 16th poll, Hynes had made a massive push spending $979k and almost tying Governor Quinn’s $998k buy. Hyne’s more efficient buying, however, (in the last week of the campaign Hynes out purchased Quin in the Chicago DMA 1317 to 1150), allowed him to reach a greater audience with his message than the incumbent governor. Additionally, Hynes use of controversial ads, allowed him to earn hundreds of points in earned media. If we compare the two graphs, one showing Quinn and Hynes’ spending, and the other their polling we can actually see that when Hynes began to spend, this race began shifting from a Quinn favored blow out to a neck and neck race.