Yesterday, PoliticOlogy discussed the USAT/Gallup poll showing that of the 1 in 12 voters had had their minds changed by a political ad, 76% changed from Romney to Obama. These were overwhelmingly Democratic voters making the change, which means they had been straying from Obama and were now scared right back in line by storm-toned ads of Romney's time at Bain Capital.
Also hiding in that poll was this nugget: the Obama campaign has outspent the Romney camp by a third in advertising—this despite the huge fundraising numbers Romney has been putting up lately. Quoting myself:
A lot of this also has to do with spending. Obama & co. are outspending Romney's phalanx of Super PACs by a third. Given Romney's ridiculous fundraising abilities, and the Super PACs that have pledged to carpet-bomb the election in negative ads, don't expect that ratio to last too long.
Not long at all. Via the New York Times:
With that cash influx, Mr. Romney's team is preparing a new advertising campaign that will aggressively portray Mr. Obama as a craven political figure, rather than the transformative leader he pledged he would be.
They began that effort in the past several days with a new ad that uses video of Hillary Rodham Clinton lashing out at Mr. Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign as spending "millions of dollars perpetuating falsehoods." Aides said they were considering more ads with Mrs. Clinton or her husband criticizing Mr. Obama.
[...] Mr. Romney's aides said in interviews that their strategy depended on keeping their candidate close to Mr. Obama in the polls until at least the Republican convention at the end of August. They hope to begin to pull away then with a relentless case that Mr. Obama has not been up to the job of fixing the economy — and that Mr. Romney has the experience and the knowledge to lead the nation to recovery.
Romney's camp is saving their money—and they're averaging $91.5 million a month right now—for the fall, when the ad blitzkrieg begins. This is say nothing of the promised $1 billion promised by Super PACs, which thus far have been phoning it in.
Long story short: this contest hasn't even begun. Until Romney puts some serious money down, and until the Super PACs kick into high gear, Obama's getting something of a free ride—and is still hovering at three point lead. Keep in mind that there's also a pretty insignificant amount of self-proclaimed Democratic voters leaning Romney—the highest number I've seen is 13%—which means the ads might a low ceiling of impact overall. If the only reason Obama's attracting voters back to his side is ad exposure to a small demographic of voters, Romney's team can neutralize that advantage in about forty-eight hours.
| Related: Are Negative Ads Working For Obama? |
The other, more counterintuitive (and thus more fun) possibility is that money actually doesn't matter at all. Here's Weigel on the fundraising gap between Obama's Priorities USA and Rove's Crossroads GPS:
[A]s the Priorities team well knew, the Swift Boat assault on Kerry’s war record was waged with one-twentieth of the backing that the Democrats raised for their anti-Bush PACs. In other words: ruthless, relentless storytelling could be done on the cheap.
And so Priorities USA intends to be outspent 5-1 or so, but to tell a better story than the rich guys. Judging by the new ad American Crossroads GPS is releasing in swing states -- a $25 million buy -- Priorities USA is lucking out.
The opinion of Romney is still up for grabs: at least one-third of respondents in each and every poll say they haven't made up their minds about him. If the Obama campaign has found a compelling narrative in portraying Romney as an outsourcing vulture capitalist who couldn't create jobs that last time he had an executive office—especially if that narrative is particularly convincing in swing states—then the fundraising gap might not matter. Tell a good story, get enough people to listen, and let the other side spend all the money it wants.
This is somewhat wishful thinking—less because your PoliticOlogist is in the tank for Obama, and more because he doesn't want elections to become purely a matter of who puts the biggest number in front of the words "billion dollars spent."
But Romney's negative ad blitzkrieg is coming, and it's going to have hundreds of millions of dollars behind it. If it pushes Romney over the top, we'll know how elections will be conducted from here on out. If it doesn't, the victory is not only for Obama but for everybody.
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