House Speaker Joe Straus spent the most money per vote to maintain his seat in the 2016 primaries — $307. One of his top lieutenants, state Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, spent the second most, $120 per vote. The extra spending may have helped Straus and his allies survive strong challenges from the right. 

The table below compares how much money candidates for the Texas House, Texas Senate, Railroad Commission, and State Board of Education spent from Jan. 1, 2015 to Feb. 22, 2016 to the total number of votes they earned in the primary election. (Two caveats: First, candidates haven’t fully reported expenditures made in the eight-days before the election, so these numbers may change when more data is available; and second, the vote totals used for this analysis are not final.)

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