This conflated two things as equivalent, and they are not equivalent.

Buying almonds is a market exchange with good transparency around what you’re getting and how much it’s going to cost.

Elections are not open market exchange. For starts, you aren’t buying a good. Another is that this discounts a lot of other election adjacent activities like all the party volunteers who are unpaid, for example. Those don’t count toward spend but if it did I imagine the totals would get much higher.

Not to mention, we are talking about someone getting elected who very well does have influence over citizenry. Buying almonds is just buying almonds. Getting elected is a transference of power.

Honestly elections are surprisingly cheap for what is gotten in return, but they couldn’t be more different