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Election agents are (or should be) collecting their receipts for formal declaration of their campaign expenses, due for publication round about 10th June. These should make interesting reading.

The "short campaign" spending limit, which applies to the period after 6th April, is £7,150 plus 7 pence for each name on the electoral register. So in a constituency like St Austell & Newquay, for example, with 75,232 voters on the list, the maximum "short campaign" spend is around £12,316.

In addition, candidates could have spent up to £25,000 in the 60 months before Parliament was dissolved. Given that the timing of the election was no real surprise, it would have made sense to commission most of the leaflets, posters and battle buses before 6th April 2010.

Let's assume that some candidates might have spent close to the limit - around £37,000 in total. That would make the cost of winning - or coming close to winning (roughly 20,000 votes) - about £1.85 per vote.

Smaller parties, of course, will have spent nothing like the maximum and so their votes might be seen as representing better value for money. Not much comfort when you still lose your deposit.