McCain has less than $50 million for October.
Obama may have as much as $500 million for Sept-Oct combined.
It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison, but let's see if I can reverse-engineer those figures. McCain had, IIRC $84 milllion from the feds for Sept-Oct, and the RNC raised $66 million in Sept. Let's assume that the RNC matches that for Oct, and spends two-thirds of their cash on the presidential race (they need to support the downticket races, also), and with the $27 million McCain had in the bank at the end of August (transferred back to the RNC), that will give the GOP a grand total of about $200 million to spend on the presidental election's last two months.
Obama had $77 million cash on hand as of the end of August, and he raised $150 million in Sept alone. (!) Let's conservatively say he only collects $100 million in October. The DNC is good for about $100 million in the same span, according to Bloomberg, and because the DCCC and DSCC are so overwhelming their opposition, they can spend all of it on the top of the ticket. It's looking, therefore, like Obama will have somewhere in the neighborhood of $425 million to spend.
That's a serious cash advantage. Another remarkable facet of this is that much of Obama's vaunted ground game is volunteer-based, so he's getting a legion of field organizers at no cost, which frees his cash for paid media. Last week, Kos crunched the numbers and found Obama outspending McCain by 4 to 1 on media buys. And Obama bought 30-minute spots on all the national networks for next week -- that's really showing off!
Win or lose, it is a new perspective being on the team with the financial advantage.
1 comment:
That's pretty surprising. The recent enthusiasm gap, of which this is a symptom, is huge, and perhaps underestimated.
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