It looks like the Mitt Romney and the Republicans are planning to outspend President Obama and the Democrats on advertising by about $18 million in this next week, according to Mitt Romney Ad Spending: Candidate And Allies Greatly Outpace Obama As Election Closes
The disparity, with Republicans spending $41.7 million and Democrats spending $23.5 million, illustrates a strategic gamble on behalf of the GOP presidential nominee to bury President Barack Obama and burn past him during the closing weeks of the campaign.
1. Romney campaign: $17.7 million
2. Obama campaign: $16.5 million
3. The Karl Rove-started American Crossroads: $7 million
4. The Romney supporting super-PAC Restore Our Future: $6 million
5. The Obama supporting super-PAC Priorities USA: $4.2 million
6. The National Rifle Association: $1.3 million
7. The conservative American Future Fund: $400k
Two saving graces I learned from this article is that super PACs do not qualify for the least expense rates for advertising slot, have to spend "up to three times as much for the same amount of air time." Since, a greater fraction of the GOP spending is coming from super-PACs and other outside groups, the GOP advantage is reduced somewhat.
And also, because the Romney campaign is apparently buying much of this increase in weekly allotments rather than monthly as we do, they pay more per unit, so it is unclear how much of a real advantage they will have in actual airtime.
When asked why the Obama campaign doesn't take money out of the more difficult states to bolster our minimal electoral path victory through OH, IA, and WI, (assuming we hold MI, and PA), Jim Messina, said "absolutely not."
"Absolutely not," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said, when asked whether the campaign is considering this, during a conference call Thursday morning. "Look, we understand that we need as many pathways to 270 electoral votes. That’s been the theory of this campaign since April of 2011. We think we have a path to victory in all our battleground states and we are going to go prosecute those paths. And because of our outpouring of supports from our grassroots donors we have the ability financially to compete everywhere we want to compete. And that’s what we are going to do."
I support our Obama campaign's strategy of remaining confident, and sticking to our plan. As our improvement in late braking polls today suggests, Romney's post-debate surge may have peaked, and the concentration of Republican pollsters who polled just after the debate may have exaggerated the real bounce that occurred. So, it would be a mistake to pull up stakes in Florida, Virginia, and Colorado based on the "last-stand-firewall" strategy.