Elections Canada data on 2015 federal election spending shows Guelph’s Liberal Party candidate Lloyd Longfield spent $211,040 on the way to winning the seat. He easily won the local campaign by nearly 16,000 votes.
While Longfield’s team spend a lot of cash during the campaign, he did not spend the most in the Guelph riding. That distinction went to the Green Party candidate Gord Miller, whose campaign spend $226,402, over $15,000 more than Longfield. On average, Green Party candidates spent just $12,642 during the campaign.
Miller’s campaign was bolstered by a number of visits to Guelph by Green Party leader Elizabeth May, who repeatedly stated that Guelph was a “winnable” riding for the party, and star candidate Miller. In the end, Miller finished a distant fourth, garnering just under 8,000 votes.
Longfield won the Guelph riding handily, with nearly double the number of votes as second place finisher Gloria Kovach of the Conservative Party. But Election Canada data shows Kovach spent a fraction of what Longfield and Miller spent, just $59,899.
Andrew Seagram of the New Democratic Party placed third in the riding. His spending figures were not accessible on the Elections Canada website on Monday.
All ridings across the country have spending limits based on a number of factors, including the overall size of the riding, the number of voters in it, and the length of the campaign. In 2015, Guelph’s spending limit was set at $239,632.
According to research carried out by the National Post, Longfield spent more than any other Liberal in the election, about $15,000 more Ottawa Centre candidate Catherine McKenna, the second higher spender in the party.
On average, The Canadian Press reported, Conservative candidates spent $90,665, outpacing the average $71,660 spent by Liberals. The average New Democrat candidate spent just $54,404 while the average Green spent only $12,642. The Gord Miller campaign spent nearly 18 times more than than average Green Party candidate.
According to Canadian Press analysis, big dollars did not translate into big votes during the election. Among the top 100 spenders in the campaign, 47 failed to win, and among the top 50 of those top 100, 31 lost their bid at a seat.
Breaking down the dollar value of votes locally, Kovach got the best bang for the buck, spending about $3.25 per vote for her 8,392 votes. Longfield spend around $6.15 for each of his 34,303 votes. But Miller’s campaign spent roughly $28.63 for each of their candidate’s 8,392 votes.
