This story caught by Mark Nickolas over at Political Base deserves a lot more attention than it has received. It turns out that not only is McCain getting killed by the traditional media, his advertising campaigns just aren't working, either. Voters seem to be immune to the appeals of an angry, befuddled septuagenarian looking to preside over Bush's 3rd term.
As Jason Linkins says at HuffPo in reference to Nickolas' piece:
Back in June, John McCain fought back against the Democrats' "50-State Strategy" by launching an eleven state strategy of his own, sinking $16 million worth of ads into Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Those ads carried the same message that McCain's former commanders used to shout at the entire Navy every time the Senator boarded a plane: "Don't hope for a brighter future!" And, as you might expect, people hated the message, and cried.
At the time, the ad buy was notable only because it meant that McCain was being forced to play defense in a large number of red states (7 out of the 11 total). But after six weeks, the bigger story is the anemic results the McCain campaign has gotten out of the ad push.
In fact, John McCain outspent Barack Obama by a bigger than 3-1 margin ($16 million versus Obama's $5 million) in June--and got next to nothing for his efforts. Nickolas' post shows the Pollster.com trendlines for the states McCain spent so lavishly on. The results for McCain are nothing short of pathetic. Only in Nevada does McCain show any serious uptick, while West Virginia hasn't been polled since June 2nd to make an assessment. As for the rest of the states? It's not even close.
Colorado:
Michigan:
Minnesota:
Missouri:
New Mexico:
Ohio:
Pennsylvania:
Wisconsin:
Now, it's possible that the GOP ad buys in these states prevented McCain from dropping even farther than he has--but if so, that has to be doubly terrifying.
Keep in mind that if Obama wins just the red states outlined above (New Mexico, Ohio, and Colorado) while keeping all the Kerry states, he wins 297 Electoral College votes. Heck, we win the whole enchilada just by flipping Ohio. And that says nothing about possibilities such as Virginia, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia where McCain didn't buy June advertising.
It will be interesting to see what the McSame campaign tries to do from here. Their television advertising dollars are wasted treasure; their candidate seems to make a gaffe every time he opens his mouth, and they can't seem to get earned media coverage to save their lives, even going so far as lying to hit-and-run specialist Bob Novak just to get some attention. I would expect them to see an unusual "shoot the moon" move or two from the campaign soon, if for no other reason than to try to move the needle with voters they aren't persuading in other ways.
Fun times...