by Frank James
Florida, with its 27 electoral votes, is the fourth richest prize available to the presidential candidates, trailing only California, Texas and New York. Importantly, it is the only potential swing state among them.
Couple that knowledge with how fiendishly close the election was in 2000 and how only a few hundred Florida votes shifted history's course and one would assume that Florida would be the place where both candidates would be currently waging the TV ad air war in earnest. But you would be wrong to assume that.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, while Sen. Barack Obama has run thousands of local TV ads in Florida, 9,785 to be exact, McCain hasn't run any local ads. Zilch. Zippo. Nada.
In Florida's living rooms, the presidential contest so far has been a landslide -- Barack Obama, 9,785; John McCain, zero.
That is the tally of local television commercials broadcast by each candidate in the state, whose 27 electoral votes Sen. McCain almost certainly needs to win the White House. Recent polls in Florida show Sen. McCain holding a small edge.
The Obama campaign has spent about $6.5 million on TV advertising in Florida, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit of media tracker TNS Media Intelligence. In part, the spending can be attributed to the Democrat's late start there. He refrained from campaigning in Florida during the primary season after the Democratic Party penalized the state for holding its primary early.
A spokesman for Sen. McCain declined to discuss why the campaign hasn't run TV ads in Florida, but said the Republican is investing heavily in the state and is doing well. "We've got offices across the state and a very robust operation," said Jeff Sadosky. "That's a state where we won a primary."
Sen. McCain does get some exposure to Florida television viewers through national buys on NBC during the Olympics and on cable news channels.
The McCain campaign must be super confident about its organization in Florida and in the polling it's seeing from the Sunshine State to abstain so far from running a single local ad.
Sadosky, the campaign spokesman, makes an excellent point about McCain having campaigned in Florida last spring and winning.
But that ignores the almost 1.8 million Democrats who turned out to vote in the January 29 primary this year, even though none of their party's presidential candidates campaigned in Florida as a result of the national party punishing the state after Florida moved its primary to an earlier, unsanctioned date.
That compared with 1.9 million Republican votes cast in a race in which the Republican candidates aggressively contested.
Still, Republicans' public demeanor in Florida is apparently far from panicked whether the issue is the Obama-McCain local-TV-ad disparity or, as it turns out, in voter registration.
A story in today's Orlando Sentinel reports that Democrats have registered more than 252,631 new voters this year in Florida compared with 98,354 registered by Republicans.
Republicans say they are unfazed by this, however. As the Sentinel reports:
Republican leaders responded that they have trailed Democrats in registered voters before and still won the election. Democrats held a 3.9 percent edge in 2000 when Al Gore lost the disputed presidential race by 537 votes. They also trailed Democrats heading into 2004, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry in Florida by 380,000 votes.
"The Democrats are focusing on registering anybody who has a heartbeat, regardless of whether the registered person has any intent to vote," said Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer.
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Comments
McCain prefers old fashioned sandwich boards. He doesn't need any fancy "airwave" advertising. Either that or he is trying out my theory that the more people hear of Obama, the more they are annoyed by him.
Posted by: Herbie H. | August 12, 2008 3:57 PM
Dem registration is surging down here, but it isn't translating into support for Dem candidates. Obama is still bouncing around 5 points behind McCain and the House races are pretty much status quo - for now.
There isn't much enthusiasm for Obama here. Which is a bit disappointing...
http://www.political-buzz.com/
Posted by: matt | August 12, 2008 5:23 PM
All the old folks love Bill O'Reilly and FoxNews, so McCain gets all the free advertisng he needs. I guess I watch too much cable, I really don't see any more ads for one or the other. What Obama really needs is for HIllary to get here and convince her many supporters to get aboard.
Posted by: rupert | August 12, 2008 5:45 PM
BHO is no techie wiz.. this is his operation that is making those buys... spend spend get used to it because if he gets in that is what he is gonna try and do.. I wonder how many of the folks that are giving him money now will feel when their taxes start going up --- there is only so much to go around
Posted by: madog | August 12, 2008 5:48 PM
The mccain campaign counts on the fact that florida is a racist state but they forget that the racism in big part of florida like miami for example is also against old people.
Posted by: maz hess | August 12, 2008 6:22 PM
The polls are saying that people are sick to death of hearing OBAMA and Obama news. Let him keep over- powering the airwaves. Let him keep making people sick and tired of him. He has shown he can't pull out way ahead of McCain, with all the money he's spent so far and all the media help.
Posted by: vp might be a qualified female | August 12, 2008 7:43 PM
How come the Swamp is acting like the NATION--censoring people who want a VOTE on HILLARY cuz we think the SELECTION of Obama is increasingly illegit?
Posted by: Don't censor people who want Hillary/Obama | August 12, 2008 8:38 PM
For what the polls are worth McCain has a 4 point lead in the latest poll as per REal Clear politics.
So so far all that money has not help Obama.
I guess the voters in florida don't like to fly "APPEASEMENT ONE" OR "WITHDRAWAL TWO" AND "SEX THREE" The official airplanes of Obama and the Democ"rat"ic Party.
VJ Machiavelli
http://www.vjmachiavelli.blogspot.com
Posted by: VJ Machiavelli | August 13, 2008 2:55 AM
MAZ-the survey done shows only 8% of Whites care about race as an issue.....as much as Obama and people that love him bring it up and the 90% of Blacks voting for him (not even an average number % wise for a supporter) I would say RACISM is NUMBER ONE with you guys. Silliness in this day and age, and yes, I'm lily white.
DON'T CENSOR 8:36pm-I think it would make it easier if the swamp gave it's guidelines for what it censors for, because it hasn't seemed to make a readable pattern to any of us and sure has made BOTH sides P. O. ha. My big gripe is when they won't allow me to give news that hasn't made it to MSM yet or very little. I will hear someone who has read his books or I've heard his speeches where he says he's talked about Nationalizing our police type forces the size of the Pentagon (like brown armies), wealth redistribution, Living with less, Universal Mandatory Health care, Universal Mandatory Volunteerism, students having to volunteer just to get college grants while welfare doesn't have to, and what's his stand on Black Liberation Theology and why would we ever believe he doesn't support that after 20 years of it and pal with the man who made a church out of hit, why just target Oil companies with special extra big (buy electric cars for us) kinda taxes when Drugs, Banks and other make more(especially when you say it's because of their profits, why not just say you're trying to do away with them because of eco politics)....that's just some of the radical thinking that I want to know more answers to, and unless us little guys make it main stream, no one will.
Posted by: vp might be a qualified female | August 13, 2008 5:03 AM
Candidates can spend a whole lot of money on TV ads, after a while they just get irritating and most people hit the MUTE button. I love MY MUTE button.
Posted by: vla | August 13, 2008 8:42 AM
Thanx VP Might be a Q.F.
Racial relationships are so complex all over America, as many of us surely would acknowledge, but states like Fl and Tx have to always be automaticly tarred with the racism charge. Thanx VP.
If the democrats weren't so good at scaring the old folk with the Social Security related issues, Fl would be reliably red. There are too, those magical heat generating species that help make Florida a Texas-East also. Just my opinion.
Here's a special, "hopefully" not too harsh PSA for the democrats of Broward County:
Your vote can only count the way that you want it to count ONLY if you mark your ballot in the correct manner that it was designed to be marked. Very Hard for anyone to otherwise know what the 'intent' was.
Have a nice morning.
Posted by: Django S. - Houston Tx | August 13, 2008 9:36 AM
To make every vote in every state politically relevant and equal in presidential elections, support the National Popular Vote bill.
The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC). The bill would take effect only when enacted by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).
The National Popular Vote bill has been approved by 21 legislative chambers (one house in CO, AR, ME, NC, and WA, and two houses in MD, IL, HI, CA, MA, NJ, RI, and VT). It has been enacted into law in Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, and Maryland. These states have 50 (19%) of the 270 electoral votes needed to bring this legislation into effect.
see http://www.NationalPopularVote.com
Posted by: susan | August 13, 2008 2:29 PM