In my last post I noted the overall disparity between the advertising efforts on behalf of Barack Obama and John McCain. Over at The Fix, Chris Cillizza goes a step further and breaks down spending by state, which I have reproduced below. Note that although independent expenditures by the Republican National Committee don't bring the same bang for the buck as candidate ads they are included in the total for McCain. Note, too, that the chart is arranged slightly differently than Cillizza's original, with the states arranged by the percentage difference in ad spending between Obama and McCain (plus the RNC) the week of October 7-13.

The first thing that jumps out from these numbers is that McCain and the RNC, combined, are outspending the Obama campaign in a single state -- and even there it appears from Cillizza's chart that the Obama campaign is outspending the McCain campaign. In nearly half of the states, Obama is at least doubling the ad budget of the Republicans.

But beyond that, look at the map. There are about twice as many states in play right now as there were at the same time four years ago -- and this list doesn't even include Nebraska's second congressional district, which it appears the Obama campaign is targeting, or West Virginia, which Obama is already hitting with his Virginia and Pennsylvania ads. Close to three-quarters of Obama's ad expenditures in this range are in states that George W. Bush carried just four years ago. This is exactly why folks in the netroots had been clamoring for a candidate to opt out of the public financing program in the general election -- so that Democrats aren't forced into the box of chasing after the single path to 270 but rather are on the offensive and put the GOP on its heels.