The results of the Illinois Republican primary are in and, once again, Mitt Romney has reclaimed his on-again off-again place as the “overwhelming, indisputable and probably uncatchable favorite.” While we won’t dip our toes into the question of Romney’s inevitability—based on the ups and downs of the race so far, we wouldn’t be surprised if Romney’s momentum waned once again—we have been interested in the question of how money has been influencing the race. Specifically: how much has each active candidate spent per delegate earned?

Since we started following the data on the amount of money spent per delegate by each of the candidates, the trend has been pretty steady: Ron Paul gets the least bang for his buck (as of March 14, he spent $683,333 per delegate) while Rick Santorum gets by far the most from his relatively meager resources ($30,279 per delegate). But how do things stack up following Romney’s win in Illinois?

The following charts compare the four GOP candidates on the total amount of money raised/spent (accessed 3/22/12). These figures include revenues/expenditures by the campaigns and the Super PACs that support them. The delegate count comes from here (accessed 3/22/12).

As with our past updates, Ron Paul once again dominates all of the candidates for spending the most while getting the least, with each of his 50 delegates costing around $730,000. At the other extreme, Santorum is still getting the most out of his money, spending only $70,722 for each of his 263 delegates. However, it should be noted that this is more than double where Santorum was at one week ago, when he was at $30,279 per candidate.

We’ll continue monitoring this race for #1, and, as always, we’re interested in what you have to say: Join the discussion below or let us know via Facebook or Twitter.

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