Estimating the Cost of a Vote

While no price can be put on democracy, it’s surprisingly easy to estimate the average cost of one US presidential vote cast.

24 February 2020

Last weekend, over breakfast with my grad school buddy, Brett Shapiro, we decided to do a little back-of-the-enveloping.

According to a 2017 Washington Post Article, “Somebody just put a price tag on the 2016 election. And it’s a Doozy!,” an estimated $2.4 billion was spent on the presidential contest, primaries included. The overall spend, including congressional races, was estimated at a monumental $6.5 billion. (Research by OpenSecrets.org.)

Conveniently, the US Census (census.gov) provides detailed spreadsheet data on 2016 voters by gender, race, region, etc. The first useful number is the percentage of the US population that voted in 2016 – this is estimated at 61.4% of eligible voters, i.e. citizens over 18. In detail, out of a population of 323,127,515 (data.census.gov, American Community Survey 2016) there were 224,059,000 eligible voters out of whom 137,537,000 are reported to have gone to the polls.

Therefore, dividing the 2016 presidential election spend by number of reported voters we arrive at $17.45 per vote received. Or if we are more inclusive, we arrive at $10.71 per eligible voter or $7.43 for each US resident, including children and non-citizens.

Assuming that slightly decreasing spending trends continue and a further reduction due to a sitting president effectively eliminating one primary contest, we’re guessing that each vote will cost an average of about $15 equivalent to about 10 vending machine chocolate bars.

Nevan C. Hanumara, PhD

Brett N. Shapiro, PhD

Two engineers who like politics and breakfast cereal.