Is PA Falling Off the Table?

Pennsylvania's TV media markets

In the past few weeks, Pennsylvania has seen fewer and fewer presidential campaign ad dollars. The Obama campaign and GOP super PACs have scaled down their TV buys in the Keystone state.

Barack Obama’s campaign has scaled back their television presence since the end of June; GOP super PACs Crossroads GPS and Restore Our Future are off the air altogether. Only the Tea Party-affiliated Americans for Prosperity is still on the air for Republicans.

The two exceptions are Mitt Romney’s campaign, which hasn’t purchased any ad time since the primary, and the pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action, whose presence in the state has remained stable and significant.

All that said, it bears note that Romney’s campaign is limited in its spending prior to the Republican National Convention in August. Per Dan Hirschhorn of The Daily, that’s because federal rules enforce a strict distinction between primary contributions and those for the general election. Though he is the presumptive GOP candidate and raising money at a healthy clip (even outpacing Obama), Romney technically has not yet been nominated.

That means his campaign is likely to retool its strategy in a few weeks, and may decide then to invest in PA. Republicans have tried to play in PA every cycle, but haven’t won the state in more than two decades.

The recent PA ad trend was flagged by Nate Cohn of the New Republic, using the Washington Post’s ad tracking feature:

Instead, Romney and his allies appear more interested in testing the waters of the Great Lakes, where demographics or electoral history are arguably more promising than Pennsylvania. Obama is more dependent on white working class voters in Michigan than Pennsylvania, and recent polls provide cause for Republicans to be hopeful about their chances. This week, Crossroads turned up the volume in Michigan and spent nearly $600,000 on advertisements. That’s not as much as other battleground states, but it’s a hefty investment.

Perhaps as a result of the diminished GOP effort, the Obama campaign has slashed their Pennsylvania spending in half to just $173,000 last week—or about as much as their spending in the Raleigh media market and less than any other state.


7 thoughts on “Is PA Falling Off the Table?”

  1. David Diano says:

    I finally read the actual report.

    It was more of a joke than I was lead to believe from the reporting.

  2. Al Schmidt answers 7 questions for government financed Democratically controlled WHYY. Al is very smart, a scholar politician, and I think answers well. Every Democrat knows there is voter fraud in Philadelphia and these phony denials fool only ….I am not sure, the uninformed?

  3. Liberal Democrat Stephanie Singer asked for City Solicitor’s opinion on overturning voter id and it seems Philadelphia’s Democratic City Solicitor said “not likely”

    And we’ve learned that Singer asked the city Law Department earlier this year if the City Commission could challenge the law.

  4. Cy Wagner says:

    What is wrong with the People of Pa.? Have they not seen the downfall of America and its values over the past four years. Why or how could anyone support Obama?

  5. DR says:


    I think that was key in whole article.

  6. David Diano says:

    If they’ve been following the voterID case, they know they don’t have a prayer of winning it.

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