Pre-election Time Capsule Uncorked

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As pundits everywhere Monday-morning-quarterback the presidential election, the pre-game analysis of at least one analyst gives a startlingly accurate picture of what came to pass.

With the 2008 Presidential Election drawing near to a close, the Brookings Institution hosted its ’08 Project with Princeton University last week. A group of undecided voters had Barack Obama and John McCain hard at work to pick up additional votes in battleground states, such as Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Iowa, explained Anthony Corrado, nonresident Senior Fellow of Governance Studies.
“If you look in those six states, Obama has 345 field offices, at the time I counted,” Corrado said. “McCain and the Republican Parties of those states have 177. That gives you some idea of the difference in scope on the ground.”

Further, Corrado argued, “I think the final stategic advantage is, obviously, in the the advertising campaign. And there’s been a lot of discussion in the press and in the public about the fact that Obama has been able to outspend senator McCain two-to-one over the airwaves.”

“At the start of this election cycle, a number of observers predicted that this would be the first billion dollar race for the presidency. That prediction was predicated on the assumption that the two major party nominees were going to opt out of the public funding system in both the primary and the general election, and that, consequently, each would raise about $500 million during the course of this campaign,” Corrado explained. “Part of that prediction proved false. While John McCain chose to take the public subsidy in the general election campaign and accept the $84 million that was provided for him to spend, and thus, we had a campaign where one of the candidates opted out of the general election public funding for the first time, but one of the candidates stayed in. As a result, we still have a billion dollar presidential race. In fact, what we have found is that, as of October, $980 million has been raised by the candidates, and the vast majority of this sum was raised by Sen. Barack Obama, so I have no doubt that we will see a billion dollar election by the time it is said and done.”

Continuing, Corrado explained, “we have Barack Obama having already raised over $640 million, essentially twice the $337 million that John McCain has managed to raise in his various campaign accounts, including some of his legal and compliance funds. So as a result, we have an extraordinary well-funded campaign, which is often cast as an insuperable advantage by Barack Obama.”

Further, Corrado explained that “the problem is he [John McCain] has faced this financial juggernaut in the form of the Obama campaign, which has essentially rewritten the fundraising record books. Obama is likely to raise as much as Bush and Kerry raised combined in 2004.”

Corrado argued “even if you include the Republican Party advertising, there’s a significant gap in disparity in the advertising campaigns, and some of these battleground states running four-to-one, even eight-to-one in some crucial moments of the election.”

Irene Warren is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.