Obama to be most expensive presidential nominee: reports

New York, Oct 18 (PTI) Democratic presidential hopeful
Barack Obama is all set to break the advertising expenses
record in a election set by President George W Bush, a media
report said Saturday.

Based on his current spending, Campaign Media Analysis
Group (CMAG),a service that monitors political advertising,
predicts Obama's advertising campaign will surpass the USD 188
million Bush spent in his 2004 campaign by early next week.

With advertisements running unabatedly on all local
and national broadcast networks and even on video games and
his own dedicated satellite channels, the Democrat nominee is
out-advertising his Republican rival McCain nationwide by a
ratio of at least 4-to-1, the New York Times said, citing
CMAG.
The huge gap has been made possible by Obama's
decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system,
which provides presidential nominees USD 84 million in public
money and prohibits them from spending any amount above that
from their party convention to Election Day.

McCain, however, is participating in the system.

Obama, who has earlier promised to participate in it,
is expected to announce in the next few days that he has
raised more than USD 100 million in September, a figure that
would shatter fund-raising records.

John McCain has spent USD 91 million on advertising
since he clinched his party's nomination, several months
before Obama clinched his.

While Obama has held a spending advantage throughout
the campaign, his television dominance has become most
apparent in the last few weeks, the paper said, adding that he
has gone on a buying binge of TV time that has allowed him to
swamp McCain's campaign with concurrent lines of positive and
negative messages.

The most recent analysis of the presidential
advertisements by the University of Wisconsin, for the period
from September 28 to October 4, found that nearly 100 per cent
of McCain's commercials included an attack on Obama while only
34 per cent of Obama's advertisements, which were more focused
on promoting his agenda, included an attack on McCain.

"This is uncharted territory. We've certainly seen
heavy advertising battles before. But we've never seen in a
presidential race one side having such a lopsided advantage,"
Kenneth M Goldstein, Director of Advertising Project at the
University of Wisconsin said.