Super Saturday was another great day in the 2016 race to be the GOP nominee. Ted Cruz scored big wins in Maine and Kansas to gain ground on front-runner Donald Trump. The biggest loser however, was Marco Rubio.
The results on Saturday represented another stinging setback for Mr. Rubio. He finished a distant third in Kansas, Kentucky and Louisiana, and was fourth in Maine.
Mr. Rubio, who backed out of trips to Kentucky and Louisiana on Friday to make three stops across Kansas, has an increasingly narrow path and is confronting the prospect of a humiliating loss in his own state next week. He has won just a single state, Minnesota, and lags well behind Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz in delegates. Now it turns out he’s also spending way more than anyone else in the GOP race.
The Florida senator spent nearly twice as much in TV advertising per vote as all other candidates. That includes Democrats too.
Here’s the low-down: Conservative Solutions PAC, which backs Rubio, spent $124,590 on ads in Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Maine in the 15 months up to Saturday. Rubio took 85,064 votes across the four states, which translates to $1.46 per vote.
Now check this out: Donald Trump and John Kasich did not spend a dollar on advertising. Trump got the largest number of votes in the Republican field, with 230,443, while Kasich came last with 62,554. That’s zero dollars per vote.
Ted Cruz had almost the same amount of votes as Trump — 230,209 Republicans backed the Texas senator — but spent $60,240 to do it. Trasnslation: that’s 26 cents per vote.
With the Democrats, Bernie Sanders will be celebrating winning two states to Hillary Clinton’s one state on Super Saturday. He, however, had to splash the cash to do it.
The Sanders campaign dropped a cool $55,060 on TV ads in the three states holding Democratic contests on Super Saturday, and 114,564 Democrats felt the Bern. That’s 48 cents per vote.
Clinton, for her part spent a tiny $6,810 on advertising, and got 246,501 votes in return. That’s less than 3 cents per vote.
Altogether, all the other candidates spent a total of 77 cents per vote, or just about half Marco Rubio’s $1.46 and he didn’t even win a single state on Super Saturday.
Is Marco Rubio’s time running out? He’s so far only managed to secure two states, Minnesota and the territory of Puerto Rico. As Ted Cruz and Donald Trump begin to pull away, the Florida vote becomes more and more important. It could spell the end of the campaign of “Little Marco.”
Featured Image Via Twitter
