Is Obama Running out of Money?

Then I saw this Washington Post blog post yesterday at Chris Cizzila's "The Fix" that shows Obama spent nearly twice as much on television advertising in 17 battleground states as the McCain/GOP forces combined over 7 days from September 30 to October 6.

The math left me shaking my head. How can Obama spend $20 million in seven days, with a full five weeks left until the election, given the gross amount of money available to him? To continue spending at that same level through the election would require another $80+ million.

Obama's campaign expenditures in the three summer months prior to the convention were $25.7 million, $57.2 million, and $56 million from June to August, respectively. Obviously that didn't include spending on television advertising at a clip of $80 million a month.

It's hard to know exactly how much Obama's campaign infrastructure (everything other than advertising) is costing, but when Palin was named VP, Obama was running an operation spending about $2 million a day. That would be $60 million a month - probably a little high if we're talking only about overhead, but if that number is $50 million a month, then the months of September and October are going to cost his campaign at least $100 million. And that doesn't even factor in whether there are increased expenses the week before the election for things like phone-banking and other GOTV efforts.

It looks like Obama saw an opportunity in the aftermath of the market meltdown in late September to put McCain away over the issue of the economy, and he went for it. He committed a significant amount of his total advertising budget over a very short span of time, and saw a significant shift in the polling both nationally and in the battleground states as a result.

It remains to be seen if this bump will be lasting or whether it will dissipate as others have in the past.