Edwards was in 28 cities in 30 days in February -- That's a lot of travel!

Edwards' polling is one-sixth that of Obama and Hillary.

As far as the campaign events one could argue that Obama's crowd size may lead to more cost, but I have no idea why HIllary is spending so much more - unless it's "stagecraft" extras or other costs are hidden in it.

This is interesting.

What is worth remembering Chris, Clinton has over 2 million in "debt" which is largely owed to her pollsters penn and his team. The politico noted this in April.

So this means a) her bang for her buck isn't as good as it seems and b) she's polling more than you think.

Interesting. Biden really does think it's 1997, doesn't he?

One nitpick, you should probably point out that these figures are for thousands of dollars spent. I was a little confused to learn that nobody payed more than $1500 of salaries in quarter one until I figured that out.

Huge numbers for funraising, polling, travel, supples and rent.  It will be interesting to see his second Q numbers and see if he gets more in line with Hillary.  If not you have to wonder if they could have problems down the road.  

The Dean campaign and its sudden money woes come to mind from '04.  Everyone thought they were flush with cash after raising what was at the time a large sum only to find out after Iowa they were strapped.

Fascinating.  Clinton is paying much LESS on her staff than Obama and Edwards.  We are always told the opposite, but that was apparently just hubris from the Edwards' and Obama supporters.   And, Obama outspending everybody on polling and fundraising?  What is up with his huge travel expenditures?  Almost a Million for Obama, only $166,000 for Clinton?   Obama is burning through a lot of cash.  

Looking at the percentages of expenditure spent on different sorts of consultants gives an interesting picture of where the various candidates think their problems are. I'd arrange it in a table, but I have no idea how to do that, so here are the raw percentages:

Political consultants:
HC: 1.64%
BO: 0.82%
JE: 1.61%
BR: 2.80%
CD: 8.49%
JB: 0.48%

Media consultants:
HC: 4.57%
BO: 0.54%
JE: 1.09%
BR: 0.79%
CD: 0.13%
JB: 4.11%

Administrative consultants:
HC: 6.07%
BO: 1.90%
JE: 1.42%
BR: 3.40%
CD: 3.49%
JB: 2.00%

Fundraising consultants:
HC: 1.81%
BO: 4.68%
JE: 4.87%
BR: 1.97%
CD: 6.41%
JB: No percentage given, but $231500 is listed as going on this. By my count, that's around 20% of his expenditure.

Of course, the raw percentage isn't everything. For example, though Dodd spent the most on political consultants, Hillary actually ran him close in numerical terms, pending about 75% of what he did.

Nevertheless, it looks to me like Dodd's intending to run a grassroots campaign, not going for media (probably a smart move, as getting coverage with this field would be hard.) I guess there's a link between the political consulting fees and his legislative work on Iraq. Biden's spending vast sums trying to work out how to make people want to give him money. Hillary's focusing on media and infrastructure. Obama and Edwards seem to be spending less on consultants than Clinton (by my back-of-a-notepad estimate, Edwards is spending a little under $300k, Clinton a tad over $700k,) most of which is spent on fundraising consultants. Edwards has the lowest percentage spent on administrative consultants of any serious candidate, although in real terms that's still more money than Dodd, Biden or Richardson spent.

Could the high amount of salary/benefits for Edwards, compared to Obama & Hillary, be due to not occupying a Senate office & thus not having a retinue of staff paid for by the govt? Anyone?

I thought that you're not allowed to use your senate staff for presidental races. But I could be wrong.

Obama and Edwards might have higher staffing expenditures, because more of Clinton's day to day work is being carried out by consultants.

That might also explain why Edwards doesn't have much internet expenditures.  Most of the work may have been done in-house.

Looks like Hillary really puts money where her mouth is. She has amassed lots fo money, but is still extremely prudent.

Obama and Edwards are burning cash crazy as there's no tomorrow.

Very interesting.

Among the choices in this category is "donations at the $4,600 level."

Hillary leads at something more than 45%
(expected, of course)
Dodd is next at 35%
Biden is at 25%
Obama is at 10%

Switching to "donations less than $200," Biden and Dodd are in negative territory!

If you are taking this at face value to say, "Obama's expenditures on Internet media are five times more than the rest of the field combined," I can tell you as a fact you're wrong, and it just makes the whole chart bogus.

I'd like to know what the corporate contributions to each candidate is. It appears they are furled into the individual contributions.

The polling expenditures are primarily payments to State Democratic Parties for their voter lists.  It's pretty amazing how much they charge - $65,000 for New Hampshire, $50,000 for Iowa.  This early Primary business is exactly that, business. No wonder they don't want other states honing in.

Scrolling down at Open Secrets to the Republicans, you find a chilling fact: Romney has spent as much as Clinton and Obama combined. As a Massachusetts resident who has seen this happen before, I need to warn everybody that it really is possible for Romney to spend so much money that the voters fall for him without really knowing anything about him (is there really anything there???) until after the election. Buying the early primaries could catapult Romney so far ahead of the pack as to be untouchable.

I wouldn't put too much stock in the categorization of Internet expenditures in the analysis, or draw any conclusions from them about Obama or anyone else's focus on the internet.  PoliticalMoneyLine had an alternative analysis, for example, here is Edwards page showing $76,679 vs this analysis' $0.

http://www.politicalmoneyline.com/cgi-wi n/pml1_sql_efview.exe?DoFn=C004312052008 &server=PML2

If you know who you are looking for (i.e. who works with the campaign), you can click through to View by Payee (under Disbursements) and find how much they were paid.  There are the same kind of errors of categorization for the other Presidentials.  These large categorization projects are hard tho, so hats off to Open Secrets for trying.

Thanks for sharing this info with us, it was really interesting to check it out. Fascinating how much it can vary from one candidate to another.

Jennifer, Web Developer currently working on the Hypnotherapy Online Pharmacies project.

It was interesting to read this for sure. I was a bit surprised that Obama had spent more money than Hillary so far.

Laney, IT Freelancer working on the Livitra/Vardanafil
project.

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