The Electoral Commission has released campaign expenditure details for the Euro-election earlier this year. How effective was party spending? Who got the biggest bang for their bucks? Here’s a table of spending and votes won.
| Spending (£s) | Votes | Votes per £ spent | |
| Labour | 1,027,339 | 4,020,646 | 3.91 |
| Greens | 534,249 | 1,255,573 | 2.35 |
| Ukip | 2,956,737 | 4,376,635 | 1.48 |
| SNP | 267,372 | 389,503 | 1.46 |
| Conservatives | 2,980,815 | 3,792,559 | 1.27 |
| Liberal Democrats | 1,580,575 | 1,087,633 | 0.69 |
In terms of spending efficiency Labour were the clear winners and will be hoping that they get three times as many votes for every £1 spent when next May comes around. The Greens were the second most efficient spenders.
For comparison, in 2009 MK spent £13,886 on the euro election of that year and got 14,922 votes in return. That’s 1.04 votes per £1 spent, a lower return than all the bigger parties in 2014 apart from the Lib Dems. Although it’s £1.56 a vote if we allow for the loss of the £5,000 deposit, unfairly taken from MK because it didn’t reach the quota for the whole constituency.
Kernowpolitico: notes from the periphery 
In terms of the mention of MK in the last paragraph, the £13,886 spent in 2009 included the £5,000 deposit. You may recall this was unfairly not returned to MK because, even though we polled 7% in Cornwall, we were unable to poll over 2.5% across the whole constituency. Using the figure of £8,886 would be fairer!
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Ah yes, very fair point. If we knock off the stolen deposit it becomes £1.56 a vote.
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