[unishark]

58 percent (closer to 59 percent in fact) can only be described as a blowout. Maybe if they spent less it would simply have been closer.

Meg Whitman spent something like $180M for the governor's race, and still lost badly. You can't sell voters something they don't want to buy.

[SilasX]

Okay but the less of a difference (you're claiming) it made, the more (it means) they had to pay per vote. So like, if it was going to be 55% in-favor regardless, then they only "bought" 3% of voters, which would mean having paid $23.98 * 58/(58-55)= $463/vote.