How many votes will 15.4 million buy in Florida?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

My guy Chris Matthews finished yesterday's show questioning the democratic principles in playing out today in Florida's GOP primary, where the LA Times reports:

"Mitt Romney's campaign had spent $6.9 million to air commercials on the state's broadcast and cable channels as of Monday morning, while Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Romney, had spent $8.5 million, according to a campaign source familiar with the ad buys. Newt Gingrich's campaign spent $1.6 million over the same time period, and Winning Our Future, the pro-Gingrich super PAC, spent $2.2 million."

It got me to thinking, in Florida's winner take all contest over 50 delegates, how much would the likely winner (Romney) be spending per vote Tuesday. Please NOTE: Restore Our Future is in NO way connected to the Romney campaign.

Well, according to Bloomberg:

"The Florida election is open only to the 4.06 million voters who were registered Republican as of Jan. 3. Polling places will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time. Most of Florida is in the Eastern time zone, and part of the state is in the Central time zone.

"Daniel A. Smith, a political scientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, said Jan. 24 he didn’t expect turnout to match the 1.95 million voters who participated in the 2008 primary, or 51 percent of the 3.83 million registered Republican voters at the time. A similar turnout rate to 2008 would draw 2.07 million voters in this year’s primary."

Just to simplify for my math sake, we'll project 2 million Florida GOP voters casting ballots in today's primary. With that, and a surge to 40 percent in the latest polls, a reasonable accounting would project that Romney will be spending about $19.25 per primary vote in the Sunshine State.

Boy, that would buy some of those voters a nice Surf-n-Turf dinner.

One has to ask, Is it worth it? And, as Chris says in the video above, What does it mean for our Democracy?

Of the Rich, By the Rich, For the Rich????