The latest Bloomberg Businessweek offers interesting information about the Republican presidential nomination contest:

The top nine Republican candidates spent $53 million through September, compared with $132 million spent at the same time four years ago. The sum is even lower than totals reported during the same period in the 2004 and 2000 primaries — when most candidates still were abiding by campaign spending limits in order to receive public matching money.

In the crowded Democratic primary in 2004, the candidates had spent $58 million through Sept. 30, 2003. Four years earlier, a primary field of 10 Republican candidates had spent $68 million in the first three quarters of 1999.

One major difference is a profusion of televised debates — 11 so far — negating the need for costly commercials.

“The debates and the daily drama of the Republican presidential primary are the new TV,” said Ken Goldstein, president of Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group in Arlington, Virginia.

The spending slump is having an effect on the campaign trail. Advertising in the first two states to hold contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, has plummeted 75 percent. And candidates who have barely registered in what’s sometimes called “the money primary” are vaulting into the lead.

Of course, those who worry about the “evil” of large infusions of money infecting American politics should know by now that they ought to turn their attention elsewhere.