Some interesting stats on the Election Season, via the NYT. A few fun excerpts:
The money race was fueled by changes in the campaign financing law that allowed individuals to contribute as much as $2,000 per candidate, up from $1,000. And it helped make one sector of the media very rich - local TV stations. According to TNSMI/CMAG, which tracks television ad spending, from March 3 to Oct. 28, about $575 million was spent on presidential TV ads. That's the equivalent of more than $2 million spent for each of the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
While the increases in individual contributions were supposed to help President Bush, Senator John Kerry and his Democratic allies outspent the president and his Republican allies in each of the five big battleground states (Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). These five states accounted for more than half of the money spent by both parties and their allies for TV ad time (about $380 million of the $575 million spent).
[...] But a true campaign still wouldn't be real without a few retail stops, and the battleground states found themselves deluged by the repeated visits of the candidates and their surrogates. For much of the year, some critical states shed their flyover-state obscurity. Since March, Mr. Bush visited six states more than 10 times: Pennsylvania (23), Ohio (20), Florida (19), Wisconsin (14), Iowa (13) and Michigan (11).
During the same period, Mr. Kerry visited seven states more than 10 times: Ohio (29), Pennsylvania (24), Florida (23), Wisconsin (17), California (12), Iowa (11) and Missouri (10).
(via RantingProfs)
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Interesting sidebar. Because of two mid-October polls here (Hawai'i) showing the race in a dead heat (MOE) we got Al Gore and Alexandra Kerry here last Friday night, and Cheney here on Sunday. Lots of cops pulling extra duty, but the Dems paid off-duty guys. The Republicans got shift guys doing OT. Net? City is out a few thousand bucks for the Republican trip, but none for the Dems. This is apparently part of a pattern; I've read stories of various cities billing the BC04 campaign for expenses and getting zip.
Chalk it up as another advantage to the incumbency. When the incumbent comes to town, it's a state function.
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