Follow The Money

The KerrySpot makes an shrewd observation on how the Kerry campaign really views its prospects:

One way that the public can get some sense of what the mood is within a campaign, and what, perhaps, those mysterious internal polls say, is to look where a campaign is spending its money.

And how is the Kerry campaign spending its money lately?

Senator John Kerry and the Democratic Party are limiting television advertising to just 14 states as the fall campaign opens, curbing their ambitions for a broader playing field against President Bush. The shift reduces Missouri, Colorado, Arizona and four Southern states to second-tier status…

Not coincidentally, Bush is up fourteen in Missouri, sixteen in Arizona, and Kerry was never a threat in Dixie. I haven’t seen a recent poll from Colorado, but the Dems’ internals must be showing similar Bushward movement.

The Kerry team sought to put off the day of reckoning by reserving $50 million worth of advertising time in 20 states through Election Day, declaring themselves in charge of a larger-than-usual playing field. But a close look at the advertising plans reveals a more modest set of priorities, centered on 14 states in which the Kerry campaign or the Democratic Party will air ads this month:

* The Kerry campaign has bought time in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Michigan and Oregon. Those are the campaign's 10 most competitive states, ranking at the top of Bush's advertising priorities as well.”

Six of those ten states are ones carried by Al Gore last time. And Bush currently leads in four of those six, while trailing in two states he carried in 2000, a net gain of 34 Electoral votes.

* The Democratic National Committee is airing commercials in most of those states to keep Kerry competitive with Bush's large ad budgets. In addition, the DNC is on the air in Nevada, Maine, Washington, and Minnesota. Nevada is a GOP-leaning state Kerry would like to win. The other three voted Democratic in 2000, and Kerry can't afford to lose them. The DNC has only a mid-sized buy in dead-even Minnesota.

* Kerry strategist Tad Devine said…

Oh, who gives a rat’s ass what the Human Sneer says.

Let’s look over this list again, and remember that to win, Kerry needs all of the Gore states, plus another seven votes because of reallocation of electoral votes after the census. Kerry is spending money in six Gore states: Iowa, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon, as well as four Bush states he hopes to pick up, Florida, Ohio, West Virginia, New Hampshire. West Virginia has five electoral votes, New Hampshire has four. Neither one alone is enough to put Kerry over the top (presuming he carries all of Gore’s states.)

The DNC is spending in three Gore states - Maine, Washington, and Minnesota, as well as Bush state Nevada. Nevada has five. Again, if Kerry were to carry all of the Gore states, and Nevada, he still would only have 265 electoral votes to Bush’s 273. (How furious will the Democrats be if their man wins more states than Gore did four years ago, and still ends up with fewer electoral votes?)

But all of this assumes Kerry carries all of Gore’s states, and right now, at least four - Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico [I would add Pennsylvania to that quartet] - look shaky.

It’s still a bit early to write off some of these states, but right now, it appears the map of competitive states is shrinking in an ominous way for the Kerry camp.”

Another way of describing it is that the primary battles over the next just-under-eight weeks will take place more on Kerry’s turf than Bush’s. And with the President starting from a 2000 baseline that gives him a 278-260 Electoral College majority, that is, indeed, “ominous…for the Kerry camp.”