Here’s the value of being a master showman running for president: Many millions of dollars.

Donald Trump is trouncing the competition in terms of getting the best return on the money he’s spending as a presidential candidate, according to a new Yahoo Finance analysis of campaign spending data. Worst among the major candidates: Ben Carson, Rand Paul and Jeb Bush. With primary elections now underway, the field is likely to narrow quickly, and the candidates running the most efficient campaigns will reap a distinct advantage.

To determine return on investment, or ROI, for each candidate, Yahoo Finance measured the amount spent by each campaign during the last three months of 2015 against the results of the most recent Democratic and Republican polls. In essence, we determined how much money each candidate spent for each percentage point’s worth of poll standings. Here are the results:

View photos Source: Federal Election Commission, ABC News/Washington Post More

(We used results of the ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted Jan. 26 and 27, 2016. This was a national poll rather than one focused on a single early-voting state such as Iowa or New Hampshire.)

Trump spent $6.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, and led the Republican field with 37% of the presumed vote in the ABC News/Washington Post poll; for each $1 million of spending, Trump “bought” 5.4 percentage points in the polls. Martin O’Malley was a distant second, with 1.9 percentage points gained for each $1 million in spending. Third: Hillary Clinton, with 1.7 points for every $1 million in spending.

One can quibble, of course, with the virtue of measuring campaign spending against poll results. Polls are notoriously fickle; they don’t necessarily predict how people will vote; they measure popularity but not necessarily electability. All true. And soon, we’ll be able to measure spending against actual votes rather than relying on polls as a proxy for voting.

Still, ROI matters quite a lot in presidential politics, especially in a race packed with candidates fighting for the same donors. Trump obviously has a yuuuuge advantage over many of his rivals because of all the free publicity he gets as the nation’s insulter-in-chief. The media reports virtually everything he says, since it boosts their own ROI in terms of ratings. Whatever his virtues or flaws as a candidate, Trump has a genius for grabbing attention that his rivals surely envy.

Comparing the efficiency of campaign spending with the monthly burn rate and financial strength of each candidate can make it pretty clear who has staying power through the primaries and who is likely to drop out soon. Here's what those numbers look like (not including donations to super PACs):

View photos Source: Federal Election Commission, ABC News/Washington Post More

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