How Did Pres. Obama Win?....He Ran A Great Campaign And Reached Out To Swing States

Politico----

After nailing down the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama poured $33 million into state parties – more than double the amount transferred by Republican John McCain – with the bulk of it in huge payments to swing state parties just before Election Day.

The transfer payments, revealed in a Federal Election Commission analysis released Monday, provide new insight on how the Obama campaign was able to leverage its unprecedented fundraising windfall to overwhelm McCain in all phases of the race and extend the Obama-coattail effect down ballot.

The transfers funded state party volunteer and get-out-the-vote efforts that, when combined with electoral trends and the Obama campaign’s direct spending advantages over McCain in GOTV and advertising, presented a nearly insurmountable obstacle for the Arizona senator.

His campaign transferred $16 million to the parties in targeted states after he locked up the GOP presidential nomination, mostly from his primary election account – though the Republican National Committee supplemented his spending more than the Democratic National Committee did for Obama.

That’s because McCain’s general election finances were limited by his enrollment in the public funding program that gave him $84 million in taxpayer funds but capped his spending at that amount. Including the taxpayer grant, McCain’s campaign brought in $220 million, while Obama – who did not take the grant – brought in $746 million, largely from small, online donations.

As the cash continued flooding his website in the run-up to the election, Obama’s campaign was faced with a dilemma unprecedented in modern presidential politics: how to spend it all before Election Day.

The transfers to the state committees not only helped drive turnout in key states (Obama won 13 of the 15 states to which his campaign transferred the most cash), but they also reinforced the effects of his coattails and could boost Democrats in both the 2010 midterms and Obama’s own 2012 reelection bid.

Among the top beneficiaries of the Obama campaign’s largesse were the Democratic parties in Florida, which received $5.5 million, Virginia ($3.1 million), North Carolina ($2.3 million), Colorado ($1.9 million), Nevada ($1.6 million), Indiana
($1.4 million), Iowa ($700,000) and New Mexico ($450,000) – all states Obama won that had gone Republican in the 2004 presidential election.

The only states that Obama lost where the Democratic parties were among the top recipients of Obama’s generosity were Missouri, to which he transferred $2 million, and Montana, where the party received $738,000.

The state Party in Iowa, where the Democratic base launched Obama towards the nomination when he won the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses back in January 2008received another $20,000 transfer the week after Obama’s landslide victory over McCain.

Over the entire 2008 election cycle – from January, 2007, through the end of last year – the DNC transferred another $78 million to the state Democratic parties, while the RNC transferred $46 million to state GOPs.

The money transferred from the candidates is more flexible than that conveyed by the national parties under federal election laws, according to Jason Torchinsky, who was an attorney for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign.

“The money that presidential candidates transfer to state parties in the run-up to Election Day pays for party building – the grassroots get-out-the-vote activity that benefits the entire ticket,” Torchinsky said. “It’s vitally important to the success of the entire ticket.”

After the election, Obama also transferred $8.5 million to the Democratic Party’s federal committees for House and Senate candidates.

And, as of the end of March, his campaign committee still had $10 million in the bank and was continuing to fund a skeleton staff, though the campaign’s operations and vaunted fundraising list have been largely swallowed by the DNC.

Overall, the FEC’s analysis found, Democratic presidential candidates brought in more than $1 billion, compared to $472 million by Republicans, though the gap was largely attributable to the sums raised by Obama and Hillary Clinton, whose unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination took in $224 million.

Adding in the national party convention committees, the total raised expressly for the 2008 presidential election comes to $1.8 billion – 80 percent more than during the 2004 presidential election, according to the FEC.


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