Where is the money being spent?

So where is all that money your donating really going? Of the $470 million that Obama has spent, 48% of it has gone to media, 32% has gone to administrative costs, 10% has gone to campaign expenses, and all other costs are negligible. Similarly, McCain has spent 36% on media, 32% on administrative costs, and 10% on campaign expenses out of his total $262 million total expenses. Taking a closer look at media expenses Obama has spent $160 million on television broadcast, $13 million on print media and $10 million on Internet ads. Interestingly, McCain has only spent around a third of what Obama has spent on broadcast media, $63 million. As far as administrative costs, Obama has spent the most on salaries and travel whereas McCain has spent it on travel and postage. Obama has spent $44 million on travel compared to McCain’s $26 million. Both candidates have used their campaign expense sector for campaign events and polls, but Obama has spent $21 million on polling and research while McCain has only spent $1.7 million. One reason for this is that Obama spends money researching locations for his events and speeches, unlike McCain.

Another outlet for McCain’s spending in on Sarah Palin. In fact, in October the campaign member with the highest salary was Palin’s traveling makeup artist, Amy Strozzi. She was paid a total of $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone. Also, Palin’s hair stylist got paid $10,000 for that same period of time.

On October 29, Obama aired a 30 minute infomercial that was shown on CBS, NBC, Fox, and 4 other channels. It reached an astounding 33.6 million viewers. On typical nights, those seven channels have about three million fewer voters. The number of viewers is incredible considering that the final game of the World Series and the finale of American Idol also appeared at the same time. In regards to race, the infomercial reached the minorities as well. There were about 6 million African American viewers and 5 million Hispanic viewers. As a result of this 30 minute spotlight, Obama’s approval ratings became higher than ever. The cost of this ad was nothing insignificant. For the 30 minute slot on 7 networks Obama paid over 5 million dollars, including $900,000 to the three major news stations. Check out the infomercial:



So what do all of these numbers mean? Obviously Barack Obama is running a larger, more expensive campaign than John McCain, but much of that has to do with available funds. Historically this is the most expensive campaign season ever, and we will see the results of this exorbitant spending extremely soon.

For further reading:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/24/pains-makeup-stylist-fetches-highest-salary-in-2-week-period/?scp=3&sq=campaign%20finance&st=cse
www.opensecrets.org
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/31/ustelevision-barackobama
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2008/10/30/2008-10-30_barack_obamas_infomercial_got_335_millio.html