The combined financial might of a PAC dedicated to the support of Mitt Romney and a platoon of political action committees is expected to break all spending records in 2012, dropping $1B into the effort to take over the White House and Congress.
According to a Politico report, the campaign of John McCain raised $370M in 2008 – a figure that the activist Koch brothers plan to surpass by themselves with a $400M investment.
Restore Our Future, the Romney-specific group, is said to have already spent $50M in the Republican primaries, and is expected to drop another $100M before the election is over. Karl Rove’s PACs are expected to toss in $300M and ample funding will also be coming in from numerous other sources.
According to the report, the Democratic Party, which has its own network of supporters and a prodigious fund-raising apparatus linked to President Barack Obama, is still likely to be outspent by at least a two-to-one margin.
Not all of the money will be going into advertising – there will be spending on tradition get-out-the-vote efforts, along with direct mail and phone and other traditional campaign tactics – but television, radio and digital all should see vast amounts of cash pour in to pay for advertising time.
RBR-TVBR observation: The Republican nomination was clinched only yesterday and the election is still months away and already the presidential ads are running where we are.
In fact, they’ve been running for awhile already. We already find ourselves tuning these messages out. We can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like when everybody with a warchest starts spending all at once during the month of October.
Broadcasters will certainly benefit, especially those with a prime battleground location – but it will be important to keep strong relations with core clients that may suddenly find it difficult to maintain marketing programs. Political is windfall and the candidates will go away – you need your core for the 21-23 months in between general election run-up times.
