Election ad spending by superPACs, mostly Republican, has soared to unprecedented levels in key battleground states, some of which have seen an increase of over 200 percent since the 2008 presidential election, according to an authority on TV advertising.
Political advertising in Iowa has jumped 356 percent and Virginia has seen a 157 percent surge, according to Kantar Media which charts TV advertising spending.
Much of the new money has come from well-funded superPACs like Karl Rove’s Crossroads that are competing with the presidential and local campaigns for TV airtime. Consider: Kantar said that Democratic and Republican groups spent an estimated $5 million each in the 2008 elections. This year GOP-leaning groups have poured some $119 million into ads, the Democrats $15 million.
That means Republican groups account for about 89% of all outside group ad spending in the Obama-Romney race, Kantar said. That has resulted in a 28-fold increase in GOP-sponsored ads since 2008.
The ad spending is focused in the same key eight states where President Obama and Mitt Romney are barnstorming. The percentage spending increases for political ads this year over 2008 in the key states as estimated by Kantar are: Florida 141 percent; Nevada 194 percent; Iowa 356 percent; Ohio 176 percent; North Carolina 206 percent; Colorado 164 percent; Virginia 157 percent; and New Hampshire 246 percent.
