Hey Big Spender!

Individual spending by candidates on META advertising.

Money can’t buy you love but it won’t buy you a county council or MEP seat either in case you were thinking about it. I wrote recently about Party HQ spending. Let’s look at some spending by individual candidates around the different European constituencies.

In the Midlands Northwest Constituency, sitting Sinn Féin MEP Chris MacManus maintained almost a 4 to 1 spending ratio on META advertising compared to the rest of the candidates during the campaign. However, in the final two weeks he was ultimately overtaken by former jockey turned Fine Gael candidate Nina Carberry, who spent €20,111 during her successful run.

Sinn Féin's Chris MacManus used Facebook ads to highlight how hard he was working for us in Europe, during the campaign there were revelations he abstained on 1,357 votes in the EU Parliament, ultimately making his ads worthless. Despite spending €18,114 on these ads, the voters of Midlands Northwest abstained from sending him back to Europe to represent them.

Since being co-…