Campaign spending

May I direct your attention to one of the latest posts on 538, which includes this graphic from the NYT:

Obama's taking Florida a lot more seriously than I would spending wise: I've been stuck on the formula:

(PA * OH * MI)² + (VA / CO)_stretch + (MN * WI)_keep = Landslide

I'm not ignoring MO, IA, NC or NM, all of which the Dems could win (and NM is always a good indicator for the overall picture). But I didn't see the battle being won there.

So I was surprised to see such little focus on OH and MI, and very surprised to see all the spending in FL, which I figured the Dems might as well write off this election because it wasn't looking good. Also, shocking McCain's spend nothing in FL.

Now another interesting note: this is just ad dollars, not total spending. And Obama is using his money to hire local recruiters (that's right, hire, not just volunteers) who will try and register some 10 million new voters and get them out on election day. And that's an expensive operation. Obama's campaign has more full time paid staff than any other campaign ever. It's a bold move and a real way to take on the difficulties his campaign faces.

But ads do win you free airtime talking about the ad. And they do influence voters. So I hope Obama picks up the advertising at some point. Then again, right now he gets so much free network airtime, even if it's mostly negative, why spend a lot more?