Here's what the parties spent in the battle for the state Senate

We did a little number crunching using figures from the Virginia Public Access Project, which tracks campaign financing in Virginia, to try to get an idea of how much it cost the Republicans to secure -- and the Democrats to try to defend -- a Senate majority this year.

Here are some highlights from the Senate race:

• The Democrats outspent the Republicans by $7,392,586 ($19,806,362 to $$12,413,776).
• Independent expenditures favored Republican candidates by $327,903 ($335,346 to $8,253).
• Republicans spent far more in independent expenditures on attack ads than Democrats did. Independent The GOP spent $243,317 (91 percent of total GOP spending) on attack ads -- the Democrats, $8,113 (85 percent).
• The GOP spent $25,682 on positive adds (9 percent) -- the Democrats, $140 (15 percent).
• The GOP spent $187,701 more than the Democrats on the two seats that changed hands.

Here's the spreadsheet we put together:

Comments

[J. Tyler Ballance]

The most shameful part of this past election is that so many seats were left uncontested by our Democratic Party.

Although many of those districts are woefully gerrymandered in favor of the, "Party of Torture" one must wonder why the Virginia Democratic Party has so widely abdicated their responsibility to field qualified candidates in those contests, and why those who have allowed those districts to be unopposed for so long are still cashing Democratic Party of Virginia paychecks?

Even if a district is deemed to be too gerrymandered to be win-able, do not the citizens of Virginia deserve to have an honest debate of the issues of our times between two highly qualified candidates selected from at least the two major parties?

One also has to wonder what has become of the Libertarians, and the Constitution Party? In places where a seat is unopposed by a major party candidate, it seems prudent that one of the third parties could really make some headway, by fielding a competent candidate from the many qualified citizens of Virginia.

Let's see no uncontested seats from now on. As for this past election, the leadership of the Virginia Democratic Party certainly has some explaining to do.