The Price of a Vote
$11.26B was spent on the 2024 US federal elections. Spread across the 265,926,503 adults it was aimed at, that is $42.35 each — but it was never aimed evenly, and almost nobody is worth the average.
Find your state
Every state as an equal square, shaded by estimated all-in spending per adult. Equal squares rather than true geography: at real area Montana and Wyoming would be near-invisible and DC would not render at all — and those are the story.
Your vote, depending on where you live
Adding the presidential race is what separates these three. On congressional money alone Pennsylvania was worth 2.0× a New Yorker. Once the presidential campaign is counted the gap widens to 5.2×, because Pennsylvania was the most contested state in the country and New York was not contested at all.
Wyoming is the instructive case. It has the smallest adult population in the country (457,274), so even an uncompetitive Senate race divides out to $32.56 a head. No presidential money chased it, so its all-in figure barely moves. Being cheap to reach and being fought over are different things.
How the presidential money is handled
$4.77B was spent on the 2024 presidential race. The FEC files presidential
candidates with office state US, so this money cannot be attributed to
states from the public data — no field records where it was spent. Rather than drop it
or pretend to know, the table carries two explicit treatments.
| Column | Treatment | Per adult | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Congress | House and Senate receipts plus independent expenditure, attributed to the state of the race | $24.41 avg | Measured |
| + Pres. flat | Presidential money split evenly across every adult in the country | +$17.94 everywhere | Known-false assumption, shown as a floor |
| Est. all-in | 90% of presidential money assumed to land on seven battlegrounds (PA, MI, WI, GA, AZ, NV, NC), 10% on the other 44 | +$87.77 / +$2.20 | Scenario, not measurement |
Two inputs are assumptions, not data: which states count as battlegrounds, and the 90/10 split. Both are stated so they can be disagreed with. The seven battlegrounds hold 18.4% of American adults, so the split does a great deal of work: a battleground adult receives $87.77 of presidential money and everyone else $2.20 — a 40× difference produced entirely by the assumption.
Believe the concentration was lower and every battleground figure falls while every other figure rises. The Congress column does not move either way, and is the only column that is a measurement.
The twelve most expensive electorates
Montana tops the table on measured money alone, no modelling required. Its Senate race cost $357.43 per adult, 14.6× the national congressional average, of which $147.60 per adult went on attacking a candidate rather than supporting one. A household of four had roughly $1,430 spent trying to move its votes — before any presidential money.
Every state, ranked
| # | State | Adults 18+ | Congress $ total | Congress /adult | + Pres. flat | Est. all-in | Senate race |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Montana MT | 901,240 | $322.1M | $357.43 | $375.37 | $359.63 | Yes |
| 2 | Nevada NV ■ | 2,567,337 | $259.8M | $101.20 | $119.14 | $188.97 | Yes |
| 3 | Arizona AZ ■ | 5,976,929 | $390.6M | $65.36 | $83.30 | $153.13 | Yes |
| 4 | Wisconsin WI ■ | 4,718,810 | $303.6M | $64.34 | $82.28 | $152.11 | Yes |
| 5 | Michigan MI ■ | 8,029,234 | $383.3M | $47.73 | $65.67 | $135.50 | Yes |
| 6 | Pennsylvania PA ■ | 10,446,122 | $487.5M | $46.67 | $64.61 | $134.44 | Yes |
| 7 | North Carolina NC ■ | 8,589,673 | $99.6M | $11.60 | $29.54 | $99.37 | — |
| 8 | Georgia GA ■ | 8,584,994 | $56.0M | $6.52 | $24.46 | $94.29 | — |
| 9 | Alaska AK | 543,597 | $47.6M | $87.53 | $105.47 | $89.73 | — |
| 10 | Nebraska NE | 1,514,862 | $97.0M | $64.04 | $81.98 | $66.24 | Yes |
| 11 | Ohio OH | 9,302,506 | $557.8M | $59.96 | $77.90 | $62.16 | Yes |
| 12 | Maryland MD | 4,862,370 | $264.3M | $54.36 | $72.30 | $56.56 | Yes |
| 13 | Maine ME | 1,157,090 | $47.2M | $40.76 | $58.70 | $42.96 | Yes |
| 14 | New Mexico NM | 1,669,012 | $65.8M | $39.45 | $57.39 | $41.65 | Yes |
| 15 | North Dakota ND | 604,202 | $23.0M | $38.11 | $56.05 | $40.31 | Yes |
| 16 | Wyoming WY | 457,274 | $14.9M | $32.56 | $50.50 | $34.76 | Yes |
| 17 | Iowa IA | 2,510,682 | $68.9M | $27.45 | $45.39 | $29.65 | — |
| 18 | Utah UT | 2,565,560 | $61.7M | $24.05 | $41.99 | $26.25 | Yes |
| 19 | New York NY | 15,865,665 | $375.7M | $23.68 | $41.62 | $25.88 | Yes |
| 20 | Delaware DE | 834,822 | $19.3M | $23.12 | $41.06 | $25.32 | Yes |
| 21 | Virginia VA | 6,827,407 | $149.8M | $21.94 | $39.88 | $24.14 | Yes |
| 22 | California CA | 30,879,264 | $643.6M | $20.84 | $38.78 | $23.04 | Yes |
| 23 | New Hampshire NH | 1,159,146 | $24.1M | $20.83 | $38.77 | $23.03 | — |
| 24 | Vermont VT | 535,384 | $11.0M | $20.50 | $38.44 | $22.70 | Yes |
| 25 | Colorado CO | 4,709,808 | $95.5M | $20.27 | $38.21 | $22.47 | — |
| 26 | Oregon OR | 3,444,707 | $68.6M | $19.91 | $37.85 | $22.11 | — |
| 27 | West Virginia WV | 1,421,431 | $28.1M | $19.74 | $37.68 | $21.94 | Yes |
| 28 | Rhode Island RI | 903,692 | $17.2M | $19.02 | $36.96 | $21.22 | Yes |
| 29 | Louisiana LA | 3,516,753 | $65.4M | $18.60 | $36.54 | $20.80 | — |
| 30 | Missouri MO | 4,858,050 | $85.0M | $17.50 | $35.44 | $19.70 | Yes |
| 31 | Minnesota MN | 4,493,489 | $74.9M | $16.66 | $34.60 | $18.86 | Yes |
| 32 | New Jersey NJ | 7,448,380 | $118.4M | $15.90 | $33.84 | $18.10 | Yes |
| 33 | Texas TX | 23,514,112 | $373.1M | $15.87 | $33.81 | $18.07 | Yes |
| 34 | Washington WA | 6,255,004 | $92.7M | $14.82 | $32.76 | $17.02 | Yes |
| 35 | South Dakota SD | 700,776 | $10.2M | $14.55 | $32.49 | $16.75 | — |
| 36 | Indiana IN | 5,337,165 | $74.7M | $14.00 | $31.94 | $16.20 | Yes |
| 37 | South Carolina SC | 4,289,808 | $55.1M | $12.84 | $30.78 | $15.04 | — |
| 38 | Tennessee TN | 5,625,000 | $61.9M | $11.01 | $28.95 | $13.21 | Yes |
| 39 | Connecticut CT | 2,942,274 | $31.7M | $10.79 | $28.73 | $12.99 | Yes |
| 40 | Florida FL | 18,811,172 | $194.6M | $10.35 | $28.29 | $12.55 | Yes |
| 41 | Kansas KS | 2,257,696 | $21.6M | $9.55 | $27.49 | $11.75 | — |
| 42 | Oklahoma OK | 3,110,306 | $29.1M | $9.36 | $27.30 | $11.56 | — |
| 43 | Alabama AL | 4,011,179 | $37.1M | $9.26 | $27.20 | $11.46 | — |
| 44 | Kentucky KY | 3,546,563 | $32.7M | $9.22 | $27.16 | $11.42 | — |
| 45 | Arkansas AR | 2,382,792 | $17.1M | $7.19 | $25.13 | $9.39 | — |
| 46 | Illinois IL | 9,996,508 | $69.0M | $6.90 | $24.84 | $9.10 | — |
| 47 | Mississippi MS | 2,257,754 | $15.4M | $6.81 | $24.75 | $9.01 | Yes |
| 48 | Massachusetts MA | 5,777,028 | $36.9M | $6.39 | $24.33 | $8.59 | Yes |
| 49 | Hawaii HI | 1,112,839 | $5.6M | $5.01 | $22.95 | $7.21 | Yes |
| 50 | Idaho ID | 1,529,750 | $4.6M | $2.98 | $20.92 | $5.18 | — |
| 51 | District of Columbia DC | 569,285 | $373,364 | $0.66 | $18.60 | $2.86 | — |
What drives the number
- Presidential battleground status is the biggest single factor — under the modelled split it adds $87.77 per adult, more than three times the entire national congressional average.
- A contested Senate seat is the biggest measured factor. The 33 states with a 2024 Senate election averaged $40.30 per adult; the 18 without averaged $16.40.
- Small population is a multiplier. Montana, Alaska, Nebraska and Wyoming rank high partly because the denominator is tiny. This measures attention per head, not importance.
- Safe and large is cheapest. Texas and California — the two biggest electorates — sit near the bottom on measured money at $15.87 and $20.84 per adult.
The state and local layer
Everything above is federal money. State-level campaign finance is regulated by 50 separate agencies, and there is no national bulk source. Where a state publishes its own data through an open portal, it can be measured — and the result changes how this whole page should be read.
| State | Cycle | State money | Federal (Congress) | State as % of federal | State /adult | Combined /adult |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Washington WA | 2024 | $232.8M | $92.7M | 251% | $37.23 | $52.05 |
| New York NY | 2024 | $197.9M | $375.7M | 53% | $12.47 | $36.15 |
| Hawaii HI | 2022-2024 | $6.5M | $5.6M | 116% | $5.80 | $10.81 |
Washington State raised $232.8M in state-level campaign contributions in 2024 — 251% of what was spent on its federal congressional races. Per adult, Washington goes from $14.82 federal to $52.05 combined — 3.5× higher.
This is a genuine limitation of every other row in the table above, not a footnote. In states with expensive state politics the federal-only figure is a floor, and a low one. Nothing here lets us say by how much for the other 47 states.
Why only three states
These are not the three states that matter most. They are the three whose campaign-finance data could be obtained without an API key, a licence, or scraping. A systematic search of every Socrata open-data portal in the United States returned state-level campaign-finance datasets for Washington, New York and Hawaii — and no others.
The remaining 47 states do publish data, but through 47 bespoke systems: custom search portals, session-locked queries, PDF filings, and downloads that cannot be automated. California publishes a complete 1.5 GB CAL-ACCESS database export, which is obtainable but requires amendment-aware processing to avoid double-counting revised filings. That work is scoped, not done.
A report about the transparency of political money runs into this: 3 of 50 states make their campaign finance machine-readable through a public open-data portal. The data is technically "public" everywhere — disclosed, lawful, available on request — while remaining practically unusable at national scale. Public and accessible are not the same property, and the difference is where most state-level money sits.
Local government
City-level money is obtainable for a handful of large cities and is not trivial. New York City's municipal elections drew $154.4M in the 2025 cycle and $119.5M in 2021 — the 2025 city figure alone is 78% of what was contributed across all New York State races in 2024. Los Angeles, Oakland, Austin and Dallas also publish transaction-level data. These are reported here as evidence that local money is material, not as a national total: no such total exists.
What this number is not
1. "Adults" is not "eligible voters." The denominator is Census civilian population aged 18+, which includes non-citizens and, in some states, people disenfranchised by a felony conviction. True eligible-voter counts would raise every figure somewhat and unevenly. The Census citizen-voting-age series requires an API key, which this report does not use.
2. The all-in column is modelled, not measured. Cite the Congress column if you need a defensible number.
3. The main table is federal only. It contains no governors, state legislatures, judicial races, ballot measures, county commissioners or dog catchers. The state and local layer above measures three states where open data exists, and shows the size of what is missing: in Washington, state money was 251% of federal. Treat every per-adult figure in the main table as a floor. No national estimate is offered for the other 47 states, because none can be sourced. Commonly cited all-election totals for 2024 run around $16B against the $11.26B of federal money counted here.
4. Spending is not persuasion. This measures money aimed at an electorate, not influence achieved. The report's central test found money a weak predictor of how legislators subsequently vote.
Why express it this way at all
Per-adult cost is deliberately a cynical framing and should be read as one. It does not show that votes are bought. It shows how unevenly the political system aims its resources: two citizens with identical constitutional standing had 542× different amounts spent trying to reach them on measured congressional money alone, decided almost entirely by an accident of residence and the expected closeness of a contest.
That is the OCDI-Gov intuition in its plainest form: authorisation is distributed equally by law, and the resources that contest it are not.