Peter Keating had a piece at New York magazine’s Daily Intel on fundraising and spending by Brack Obama and John Mccain that probably had more insight into the state of play than the argument between the Weekly Standard’s Jaime Sneider and The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder — and ensuing reax –over whether Obama’s spending is out of control. Two key graphs from Keating:
The Obama campaign believes it will raise something like half a billion dollars from nearly 2 million supporters for the general election: $300 million for Obama himself from here on out, plus $180 million through the DNC, where donors can give up to $28,500 apiece. Obama is confidently plowing $650,000 a day into television ads, nearly four times as much as McCain is spending. And he is closing off alternative sources of money: Obama has rejected public financing and has also discouraged independent groups that might not submit to his message discipline, leading “527†organizations such as the Fund for America and Progressive Media USA to disband.
But Obama will need every penny he’s wishing for to keep up with his opponent. Republicans are now busy channeling money to McCain through contributions to his campaign, to the RNC, to state GOP parties, and to the Republican Governors Association. The latter two groups are exempt from federal restrictions because they are supposed to work at the state level, creating giant loopholes that McCain is exploiting. Indeed, McCain is now hitting donors up for $70,100 a pop: $2,300 to McCain, $28,500 to the RNC, and $10,000 to each of four state parties. McCain’s campaign expects to rake in another $95 million through the Republican convention. It will then collect $84 million in public financing. And then it estimates “independent†organizations such as the RGA will spend something like $120 million on McCain’s behalf. McCain’s total general-election budget: about $400 million.
Since Keating wrote that, we have learned Obama’s fundraising numbers for June were a bit better than rumored, though not meeting the hype of some Obama fundraisers. We have also learned that the DNC is planning to set up and independent ad campaign at least as big the $118 million the DNC spent in an independent expenditure effort in 2004. Whether this effort is part of the DNC’s previously announced budget remains to be seenÂÂ
Either way, the overall numbers suggest that the Obama/DNC combine plans to raise at least $165 million more than the McCain/RNC combine, as it has a higher target budget, but has passed on public financing. As the two combines are roughly tied in June, this suggests that the Obama/DNC combine should have to raise an average of $40 million more than the McCain/RNC combine every month between now and election day. Obama exceeded McCain by only $30 million in June — the month he effectively sewed up the nomination. Trying to shatter all-time records during the summer doldrums of July and August may be challenging, even for Barack Obama.ÂÂ
In the meantime, we are left waiting for Obama’s actual finance report, which would have more information on the Obama campaigns actual “burn rate” and on how many Clinton supporters have kicked in to the Obama campaign.
Keating ultimately comes to a conclusion that Obama’s fundraising edge is likely to be narrower than some thought, making a “50 state strategy” more risky (if Obama follows through on it). Ambinder, who defends Obama’s seemingly unprecedented spending, reaches much the same conclusion:
The Obama campaign intends to run the equivalent of 18 major Senate race campaigns. Expensive? Yes. Unprecedented. Yes. Centrally controlled? Yes. Risky? Yes. Leaving nothing to chance? Yes.
This seems pretty conistent with the other ways in which the Obama campaign seems a bit control-freaky (waving of non-DNC independent expenditures, criticizing the New Yorker and New York Times coverage of the campaign, etc.).
I really like the way O!™ has brought hope and change to this election cycle by using the innovative strategy of outspending his rival. Townhall meetings with McCain? Fuck that, let’s just combine free (positive) exposure from the MSM with mind-numbingly asinine commercials.
!
Baracky has been running ads here in Indiana for literally weeks now, talking about his Kansas values.
Harshin’ palooza’s mellow in 5,4,3…
I guess I should count myself lucky to live in an area that is already in the tank for Obama. Thus far, we’ve been spared.
He has a new ad with Sen. Lugar about nuclear non-proliferation here. I cannot imagine that they think Indiana is going to be in play.
[…] Karl explores the other side of Obama’s campaign coin. […]
These numbers are so strange to me. Since I don’t watch TV I’m oblivious to what’s going on in that world. How much are they spending to get my online attention? Would it matter, since I only stop by blogs for the blogger, not the ads?
Has anyone ever done a study on how fucking TV commercials affect the voter? Honestly … all this money spent on the most idiotic voter.
Sorry for my potty mouth this morning. This stuff just rubs me the wrong way.
No Obama ads during The Open Championship. Strange. Oh wait, Tiger’s hurt.
I meant that as a joke.
A joke about how lefties view righties’ views on people of color. It’s subtle reverse satire-comedy. You won’t get it.
Al: Huh?
Told ya
If McCain would start a “Nancy’s an Idiot” series of commercials, I’d send him money.
At what point does the saturation backfire by becoming part of the background noise that gets ignored? Somewhere there is a law of diminishing returns, and I can’t see any media consultant not taking that into account.
Racists.
Yay! Made it to homeroom in time for morning denouncements.
16: This is true. O! likely overdid it in PA, for example. I commented yesterday that guys like Axelrod/Plouffe are likely smart enough to learn from it in general, but that in the heat of presidential campaign, the media people are always going to be subtly trying to up the scare factor to bump up the ad buys.
“At what point does the saturation backfire by becoming part of the background noise that gets ignored?”
I’d say ’68 or ’72, although Reagan’s ’80 campaign had some excellent work. Talk radio weighs a helluva lot more than ads but the MSM still weighs slightly more than talk radio (IMO).
Given that, the MSM has never effectively covered up ProggStink. Not in ’52, not in ’56, not in ’68, not in ’72, not in ’80 (after Carter ‘came out’), not in ’84, not in ’88, not in ’00 and definitely not in ’04. It’s stronger than a family of skunks fighting in the crawl space and O! is covered head to foot in it.
I have a naive and ignorant question that I would like to ask. At what point will a campaign look at its fundraising and lock in a strategy based on what they anticipate raising? States to target, the basic media plan, organizational efforts etc. I imagine it’s pretty dynamic, but when is the general blueprint pretty well established? September seems kind of late. I know I’m getting politics and for real marketing confused probably. I just don’t know how they can work without a fixed budget is all, though they pretty obviously do.
See. Here’s the rule for real campaign finace reform: The total amount spent by a candiadate and on a candidate’s behalf may not exceed the total income that candidate would receive in one year of serving in the office he is seeking.
And that’s okay because I would also make any paid campaiging prior to 3 weeks before the 50 state national primary date and in the 3 weeks between the convnetions and the general election, illegal.
There have been a couple of Obama ads in metro Atlanta over the last couple of weeks.
In possibly unrelated news, I discovered my TiVo remote has a “Mute” button that works almost as well as fast-forward, if fast-forward isn’t available.
Giving O! the MST3K treatment: Priceless.
I commend and applaud the artful interlinking of metaphor and adjective. Skunks, after all, backfire.
Well…we the taxpayers are picking up much of his Mideast/European vacation as a senate “fact finding” trip. The Obama campaign will pay, I believe, for the German portion.
Given that the three anchors are going on progress with the king, that will be a lot of free advertisement both in July and in the coming months when Obama reuses footage of adoring crowds and world leader photo-ops.
(ps. does anyone see any humor in Obama, who has tried to deny that meeting with the US President is a prize and photo op that legitimizes dictators, traveling the world to get footage of himself with world leaders and adoring fans to use to legitimize his own credentials?)
. As of July 1, Obama had spent nearly $92 million compared to McCain’s $11 million.
Because of the CHANGINESS!
This campaign so far is a lot incoherent to me.
NPR is framing every foreign policy story as Baracky and McCain basically have the same policies except Baracky’s is more better.
But Baracky’s campaign is built on the fundamental lie that McCain is Bush. Would it were. The debates will a lot kibosh that I think, and lay bare the converse. Baracky is Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s love child. Same same they are. There’s no way to kibosh that.
And cause of the media already doing its advance work, Baracky can’t make perceptions of the status quo any more worse. So it just seems to me the logical dynamic of this race will have Baracky playing defense before this is over. So how does he get his underdog on? He’s the hopey changey messiah. It’s his voice mostly. And that arrogant cocksucker’s voice doesn’t do underdog.
There will be no debates. They simply will not allow Baracky to answer unscripted question, and even in a “debate” with a panel of MSM lights, there’s the chance McCain would toss a question over.
oh. But they already did the advance work.
hf,
There isn’t really a set template for campaign planning. Contrast the ’96 campaign, where an incumbent Clinton was able to spend money early turning Bob Dole into Newt Gingrich with this year, where McCain blew that opportunity, but the long Dem primary contest left Baracky and HRC focused on each other. The trad thinking is that everything picks up after Labor Day when summer vacation season is over, but obvs there are exceptions.
Got it. Mostly I’m wondering when we can say if McCain has written off California. Hispanics for real hate Baracky. You don’t read that very much, but they do.
#19 Karl: That question came to me because a commercial can be played too many times and result in turning off viewers or listeners. I know that a commercial for ‘Phantom of the Opera’ that I heard years ago was played so often that it would have been very bad for andrew Lloyd Webber if he ever encountered me alone. But I digress.
I would be surprised if large corporations with large ad budgets (such as Coca-Cola or Procter & Gamble) have not done studies to see how often a particular ad should play – daily, weekly, and monthly – and how many variations of the ad ought to be in the cycle so as to keep the campaign ‘fresh’. Overkill is, I think, as bad as too little.
Mikey,
I am not aware of formal studies, but the conventional wisdom tends to be that with political campaigns, it’s a sorter-term effort and you shouldn’t change your ads too often, lest you muddle your message. I touched on those topics very lightly with the links at the end of this post.
sorter is short for shorter.
Thanks for the link Karl (by changing ads I don’t mean changing message but changing the surface look of the ad – the pictures, use different wording, etc.). I’m not an ad guy myself, but I would think there is a known life-span for an ad campaign (especially for ephemral products like soda pop or national candidates and that too much can drive away potential customers (or result in ignorage) and too little means your message does not get out. And this campaign has run longer than previous campaigns, so the conventional wisdom may need to take that into account – the permanent campaign is still a ‘new’ phenomenon.
My uneducated opinion on the subject.
…(especially for ephemral products like soda pop or national candidates) and that too much can drive away potential customers…
forgot the close paranthese
Soda Pop huh!…..If things start to go South for O, look for “New O”. With a “new formula”
In someplaces it is soda, in someplaces it is pop. A national campaign has to be aware of regional variations if it is to be effective.
(ps. does anyone see any humor in Obama, who has tried to deny that meeting with the US President is a prize and photo op that legitimizes dictators, traveling the world to get footage of himself with world leaders and adoring fans to use to legitimize his own credentials?)
MayBee,
This is genius! I was remiss in failing to mention it before.
OK, I’m slow, but how can something be both risky and leave nothing to chance?