Where is my Romney yard sign?

Living in a swing state I am subjected to a constant stream of shock and disbelief from conservatives every time some fresh air seeps into their bubble.  For about the past week it has been bewilderment over why Obama ads have dominated the airways, how the liberal media is in the tank for Obama and how the only poll that matters is Nov 6th which is often countered with the polls are skewed by the liberal media. This of course is all mixed in with the normal rhetoric of The President being a Muslim, a socialist hell bent on destroying America, etc.  The one that got me thinking though was a simple post on a message board by a person wondering why they hadn't received their Romney yard sign yet.

If the Romney campaign isn't spending their money on advertising and yard signs, where are they spending it?  It was time to do a little digging on the FEC's website (http://www.fec.gov/) and in the course I discovered what might be the greatest lie the liberally biased media has ever told.  Conservatives know the media loves the left and nothing ever reported should be trusted, but for some reason when it is something that they desperately want to be true they swallow it hook, line and sinker.  So what is this grand media lie that has now been exposed?  Candidate Mitt Romney is getting absolutely crushed when it comes to fund raising!  You see, when the media is reporting on the money advantage the Republicans have they are looking at TOTAL Republican dollars versus TOTAL Democratic dollars.  When you look at just the money the campaigns have raised it shows a vastly different story and probably goes a long way toward explaining why Romney is rapidly losing ground.

Let's take a look at the math...  to aid in the process I am going to refer to the Washington Post's site on campaign fundraising and spending (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/campaign-finance/).  YES I know they are a liberal rag, but they do a nice job of summarizing the data from the FEC filings.  From their site you'll see The Democrats (The President) have raised $779M and Republicans (Mitt Romney) have raised $784M through September 21st, which is pretty consistent to what you here throughout the media regarding Romney's fundraising prowles.  However when you look at just Barack versus Mitt, the numbers tell a dramatically different story.  The President has raised $441M (56% of the Democrats total) versus Mitt Romney who has only raised $284M (36% of the Republican total).  Yes, The President has raised 50% more money than Mitt who also had the misfortune of having to spend a lot of his money during the primary season.  Before you fire off the email, YES you do need to include the RNC fund raising in the mix because during a contested primary season many people will give to the party instead of an individual candidate because winning the election is more important than the individual candidate.  That does close The President's fundraising advantage, but not by much.  The difference is in the money donated to the Super Pacs and their respective affiliations where the Republicans claim a $100M advantage.

So if the total dollars are near equal why does it matter where they come from?  Well I am glad you asked.   Let's start with the easy math.  According to the WP site, $40M of the $100M super pac advantage came from Sheldon Adelson.  If you recall he was basically the sole financier of Newt's Presidential bid, so the bulk of that "Republican money" was spent AGAINST Mitt Romney.  You see, donations to various different groups provide the money to get THEIR message out which may or may not be supportive of the candidates message.  This is why the Romney campaign seems to be all over the board when it comes to a message, because they do not directly control the bulk of the messages being put out.

Digging a little deeper, you also see another troubling fact for the Romney Campaign...  Republicans really don't like him enough to donate to his campaign.  Sorry, but this is one of those "hard truths" Chris Cristy promised to tell you.  Obama has raised nearly as much from contributors donating $200 or less than what Mitt has raised in total!  The President has nearly 4 times the number of individuals willing to donate to his campaign than Mr. Romney does.  That's right, roughly 60% of The President's $441M has come from people donating $200 or less versus Mitt getting over 50% of his $284M from those donating $2000 or more.  You can make a pretty strong argument just from this data that "rich people" really prefer Mitt Romney to Barack Obama.

Now we have a better understanding where the money is coming from, but I still haven't figured out why that poor person hasn't received their yard sign yet!  It might be as simple as Facebook is the new yard sign, but last time I mentioned Facebook I got absolutely buried by the right dismissing it much like they have the skewed poll data.  I won't bother getting into the math that shows Obama has the same advantage in "likes" as he does in under $200 contribution.  Accepting Facebook isn't "the new yard sign", its time to dig into how the candidates are spending their money to see if we can figure out where this person's yard sign is at.

Time to head back to the FEC site to look at September's detailed spending for each candidate.  Unfortunately their is no category called "yard signs" so this isn't going to be as easy as I thought.  Wait, there is one called "Printing and Design Services" and Mitt spent a whopping $1.6M in September alone.  Let's see how that compares with August...  WOW it is more than 10 times what he spent on the same category in August.  GREAT NEWS!  Your yard signs are on the way...  Ut oh, I see Mitt spent $4.7M in August on "Direct Mail Consulting" which makes me suspicious that Mitt's printing spend in September went toward junk mail instead of yard signs!  Maybe we're just going to have to look at things from a higher level to see where those yard signs are.

The WP site tells me both "parties" spend roughly 47% of their money on advertising (I wonder if that is the 47% Mitt was referring too).  Yard signs are a form of advertising right?  Before we start breaking down the math, I should mention that all though the parties have raised near equal amounts the Democrats have spent roughly 15% more of their money than the Republicans.  (You'll have to ask Karl Rove why he is hanging onto your dollars instead of spending them.)  Let's see, of the $290m Dem's have spent of advertising 67% went a company called GMMB (http://www.gmmb.com/) a professional communication firm responsible for helping to create The President's message and another 20% spent with a company called The Bully Pulpit, who handles all of the online message creation and placement.  Wow, 87% of the Dem's message being created by just 2 companies.  Let's take a look at how the Republicans have spent their $249M.  They spent 38% with a company called American Rambler Productions (https://arp.mediasilo.com/) and another 30% with a company called Mentzer Media.  Oh, wait a minute, Mentzer media is the company the RNC uses to promote down ticket candidates, Mitt really doesn't spend too much with them.  Let's see if this ARP is in the yard sign printing business.  Not much info about ARP out there except they are in the media ad buying business and they are run by Eric Ferhnstrom and Stewart Stevens who are also Mitt's senior advisers.  Let me get this straight, Mitt has outsourced his media buying to a company run by his staff?  That sounds like an article in itself and might explain why they are getting crushed by GMMB in messaging, but it does little to explain what happened to the yard signs.

Let me try another angle...  Time to look at the campaign websites for this key swing state to see if they can tell me what happened to the yard signs.  Wow, Mitt has 36 campaign offices in a state with 88 counties.  That should be enough to keep up with yard sign demand shouldn't it?  The Republicans learned in 2010 that it is all about the ground game so they must be crushing the Democrats in terms of offices right?  Ah...  I guess not.  It seems the Dem's just celebrated the opening of their 100th office in this key battleground state, but maybe it points to Romney's offices just being too overwhelmed to handle all the requests for yard signs.

There you have it...  After HOURS of digging, I have NO idea why this person hasn't gotten their yard sign yet!  But, I did find out some of the reasons why Mitt is slipping in the polls and why a victory in November is becoming increasingly less likely.  Unfortunately for Mitt when it comes to the money, the numbers don't lie.