Updating Obama's advertising numbers for population

by: blueleader

Wed Jul 30, 2008 at 16:39


Cool information that puts this all in perspective. The numbers on the right indicate the amount of money that the Obama campaign is spending, relative to the McCain campaign, per every one hundred voters, in each state, on TV ads--Chris

When I read Chris' front-page post about the relative ad spending by McCain and Obama, I thought that it would be more useful if adjusted for the relative size of the states. So I did the math; my results and commentary are below.

State            Obama     McCain    Margin
Alaska             19.8    0.0    19.8
Colorado          25.5    35.2    -9.6
Florida             43.5    0.0    43.5
Georgia            31.5    0.0    31.5
Indiana            28.1    0.0    28.1
Iowa                32.2    43.5    -11.3
Michigan           30.7    36.4    -5.7
Minnesota         1.9    15.6    -13.7
Missouri            30.1    38.7    -8.6
Montana           19.2    0.0    19.2
Nevada             42.3    75.8    -33.5
New Hampshire  40.6    35.5    5.1
New Mexico        19.8    33.6    -13.7
North Carolina    27.0    0.0    27.0
North Dakota     32.4    14.7    17.7
Ohio                 29.3    30.3    -1.0
Pennsylvania     42.5    49.6    -7.2
Virginia             50.8    28.8    22.0
West Virginia     11.7    29.2    -17.5
Wisconsin          30.5    36.3    -5.8

Each point in the chart above represents $1000 per 100,000 eligible voters.

(More below the fold--Chris)
blueleader :: Updating Obama's advertising numbers for population
A few observations. First of all, except for a few outliers, Obama's spending is tightly clustered from from about 20 to about 40 thousand dollars/100K residents. The figures are not broken down by media market, but I suspect that the Obama buy in West Virginia might be meant to target southern Ohio just as much as West Virginia itself, if not more so--it's not a state that's necessarily favorable to Obama specifically. On the one hand, primary results don't necessarily predict general election results; on the other hand, he got 26%. The other big outlier for Obama? Virginia, where's he's spending $50K for every 100,000 residents, almost 25% more than in his next-highest state (Florida, in a somewhat unconventional move).

For McCain, the biggest state by far is Nevada, with about $75K per 100,000 people. This is $33,000 more than Obama, the biggest margin for McCain in any state. Obama's margins, meanwhile, are usually higher than McCain's. He leads by $43K in Florida--where McCain has yet to spend anything at all--and by about $30K in Indiana and Georgia. Feints? Or states that he believes he can legitimately put in play? It'll definitely be worthwhile to revisit this chart in a few months once the air war has really heated up.

cross-posted at Overdetermined.net

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Updating Obama's advertising numbers for population | 10 comments
WV buy (4.00 / 1)
I wonder if some of that could be going into SW VA as well. Does the Beckley media market reach into SW VA?

Also, McCain is really really worried about Nevada. Probably the state where they think they have the greatest chance to keep it in his column at this point.

You'd think he'd be outspending more in MI though because that's obviously one of the few states where he could play offense.

Interesting stuff indeed though.  

WV media markets (4.00 / 3)
W.Va. has overlapping media markets with Ohio, PA, MD/DC, VA, and KY.

W.Va. is an "export" state to Ohio and KY via the Wheeling, Parkersburg, and Charleston-Huntington markets. Together these 3 markets cover 22 W.Va. counties, 11 Ohio counties 10 KY counties.

W.Va. is am "import" state from PA, DC/MD, and VA via the Pittsburg, DC (/NoVa/Hagerstown, MD), and Harrisonburg (VA) markets.

W.Va. also includes two self-contained markets. One covers the southern coal fields (Bluefield/Beckley) and one the the north/central part of the state (Clarksburg-Weston).

To note the obvious... any buy credited to a W.Va. media market will hit W.Va. more than a surrounding state, otherwise the market is named for the surrounding state. Still, depending on the markets, it could have been closer to 60%/40% in-/out-of-state, or 100% all in-state. There's no way to know without more details of the buy.

They call me Clem, Clem Guttata. Come visit wild, wonderful West Virginia Blue

[ Parent ]
the Bluefield question (4.00 / 1)
Oops, left out an answer.

From what I can tell... even though I've seen stories in the Bluefield, W.Va. newspaper about Bluefield, Va. the media maps I found puts Bluefield, Va. in a Va.-only media market.

They call me Clem, Clem Guttata. Come visit wild, wonderful West Virginia Blue

[ Parent ]
Oops... (4.00 / 2)
Okay, that's what I get for going from memory.

Tazewell county in Va. is part of the Bluefield/Beckley market. It's the one county in Va. that shares a market with the 9 counties in W.Va. making up that market.

So, FWIW... that means there's only one completely self-contained media market in W.Va. Ironically, that market (Clarksburg-Weston) includes at least one county from each of the 3 CDs in W.Va. (go figure...).

They call me Clem, Clem Guttata. Come visit wild, wonderful West Virginia Blue

[ Parent ]
Thanks for the info! (4.00 / 2)
I always liked the saying about WV,

"The most northerly southern state, the most easterly (mid)western state, the most southernly northern state, and the most westernly eastern state"

[ Parent ]
$ per electoral vote would be an interesting comparison, too (4.00 / 1)

I second that emotion - n/t (0.00 / 0)


Jeff Wegerson
[ Parent ]
Man (0.00 / 0)
Johhny McC needs to give up on Pennsylvania. Seems like he's throwing away good money there.
Almost Time to Tighten Up the Target List? (0.00 / 0)
Is it time to pull Alaska and Georgia off the target list and reallocate resources to places like Colorado and Nevada? That's what this chart indicates to me.

There's no good reason for Obama to be allowing himself to be outspent in Colorado when even Stevie Wonder can see it's the fulcrum of this election.

Nevada's a low-info state (0.00 / 0)
McCain must be trying to improve his numbers there in the hope that it's too difficult to organise for Obama's ground game to run away with it and to get the first blow in.

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Updating Obama's advertising numbers for population | 10 comments
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