Barack Obama (D-IL) spent slightly more than Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in election contests prior to the Super Tuesday slate of states, and was slightly ahead of her on that occasion, too. But in the next two weeks he overwhelmed her by nearly a 4-to-1 margin, and doubled her pace from 3/4/08 through 5/20/08. All told, Obama has spent $78.569M to Clinton’s $41.81M. The study is from the University of Wisconsin and was highlighted at Talkingpointsmemo.com.
Here are the campaign ad-spending breakdowns for the two candidates, segment by segment, keyed to election event dates:
* 1/3/08-1/29-08 (IA, NH, MI, NV, SC, FL): Obama $19.178M, Clinton $16.708M. Obama outspend ratio: 1.09.
* 2/5/08 (AL, AK, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, GA, ID, IL, KS, MA, MN, MO, NJ, NM, NY, ND, OK, TN, UT): Obama $14.19M, Clinton $11.253M. Obama outspend ratio: 1.26.
* 2/9/08-2/19/08 (LA, NE, WA, ME, DC, MD, VA, HI, WI): Obama $4.385M, Clinton $1.182M. Obama outspend ratio: 3.71.
* 3/4/08-5/20/08 (OH, RI, TX, VT, WY, MS, PA, IN, NC, WV, KY, OR): Obama $41.569M, Clinton $19.667M. Obama outspend ratio: 2.11.
RBR/TVBR observation: In terms of delegates won, Obama got off to a good start by winning Iowa and South Carolina convincingly. The candidates pretty much broke even on Super Tuesday (advantage Obama) and from March on (advantage Clinton). However, during the two weeks Obama had the 3.71 spending advantage, he cleaned up, earning 281 delegates to Clinton’s 163. A lot of factors go into a performance like that, but it certainly says something about the power of advertising.
