The Campaign Trail: Obama vs. McCain

by tremayne [courtesy of Open Left - Front Page]

John McCain heads to Missouri on Monday with mentee Sarah Palin in tow. It caught my attention because it's one of the few traditional battleground states where McCain is actually ahead. In fact Chris Bowers' latest Presidential forecast has it in the "Solid McCain" category with a margin of 8 percent.

With McCain behind in so many important swing states, why is he making a joint appearance with his sidekick in a state Bush won in 2004 with a 7 percent margin? It might be because of how much time Barack Obama has spent there, 7 visits this summer. Obama hasn't spent more time in another state (two others he visited 7 times as well). Even if Obama fails to close the gap in Missouri he's forced the McCain campaign to spend some of it's limited time/money in the state.

The chess match between the campaigns involves several components but one important one is face time by the candidates in critical states. An analysis of campaign appearances by the two Presidential nominees appears on the jump (with some surprises).

The numbers in the table below represent campaign appearances since Barack Obama clinched the nomination on June 3. Certainly Obama can be considered to have benefitted from all the appearances he was forced to make throughout the spring while he dueled with Hillary Clinton. And John McCain did many appearances during that time as well. But because many voters start to pay closer attention after the nominees are known and in order to compare apples to apples I have limited this to summer compaigning up to and including yesterday.

Because we're interested here in the free media that these events generate, I have not included private fundraisers or two back-to-back events in the same city. Multiple events in different cities are counted as are repeat visits to cities on different days.

                       Barack Obama         John McCain

Location	Summer Visits	Summer Visits
All States	55	61
Ohio	7	11
Pennsylvania	3	11
Florida	4	9
Virginia	7	4
Missouri	7	3
Michigan	6	3
Colorado	2*	6
Minnesota	2	3*
Wisconsin	2	3
Nevada	2	3
N.Hampshire	2	3
New Mexico	2	3
N.Carolina	3	0
Indiana	2	1
Iowa	2	1
Montana	2	0
North Dakota	1	0
Georgia	1	0

*I counted only one "event" for the DNC and RNC even though the candidates were there more than that  

The first thing to note is that John McCain made more unique campaign appearances this summer, 61-55. The disparity is relatively small and probably due to Obama's extended oversees trip (which generated its own free media).

More than half of McCain's campaign appearances (31 of 61) are confined to 3 states: Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. He leads in Florida, is behind in Pennsylvania and Ohio is a toss-up. Of those states, Obama is only spending a lot of time in Ohio where he has been 7 times this summer. 

In addition to Ohio and the aforementioned Missouri, Obama has also made 7 visits to Virginia. Michigan is closely behind with 6 Obama visits but those have been fairly high-profile appearances. Obama has a polling lead in Michigan of about 5 and a half points, similar to his lead in Pennsylvania.

As has been noted before, Obama is spending time in more states (18) than McCain (14) but consequently his time is not as concentrated in the most-visited states.

Colorado may see additional focus in the coming months. It is already McCain's 4th most visited state and, of course, the DNC was held there which should give Obama a boost. Right now the state polling shows Obama with a very narrow lead so more visits (like McCain-Palin's yesterday) from each campaign are likely.

What do you see in these numbers? Where should Obama be spending more/less time?

(Source for the Obama and McCain appearances: Washington Post)