A little catch up

Working nights for the past four days has led to a little lag in the blogging. Yesterday an AP article came out commenting on Bush's re-election bankroll.

President Bush has spent seven of every $10 he has raised for his re-election campaign, more than half of it on television ads, and is asking supporters for more money.

Bush has collected at least $218 million since he began fund raising in May 2003, easily outpacing Democratic rival John Kerry. But Kerry raised about $25 million to Bush's $13 million in May as the president scaled back his record-setting drive to hold fund-raisers for other Republicans.

(snip)

By the end of this month, Bush and Kerry together will have spent more than $140 million since March on television ads. Bush will have spent more than $80 million and Kerry more than $60 million.

This means Bush has already spent more than half his money in the campaign, most of it on TV ads. And that Bush has out spent Kerry on TV ads by a 4-3 margin. So one would expect the Bush campaign to have made an impact so far, right?

Well, yes and no according to a new AP article today:

President Bush's re-election team drove up negative impressions of John Kerry during a relentless $80 million advertising campaign the last three months, but the Republicans failed to undercut the Democrat's standing as a viable alternative to Bush.

As the Bush-Cheney campaign's spring push draws to a close, the Republicans have succeeded in changing voters' perception of Kerry - from a positive opinion held by a majority of Americans to a largely divided view.

So more voters now view Kerry less favorably then they did before (it is a 50-40 split, down from a 2-1 favorability factor before the ad blitz), but overall poll numbers show despite that success, the election is still pretty much a toss up.

Eight years ago, the Clinton re-election team, relying on an aggressive ad campaign, turned a 4 percentage-point lead over Dole in January into a 16-point advantage in June. Recent surveys show Kerry either tied with Bush or one candidate holding a slight advantage over the other with more than four months remaining before Election Day.

All this says to me that while the Bush campaign has had to actively paint Kerry unfavorably, people seem to find Bush just as unworthy naturally. Not a bad thing for Kerry at all.

*UPDATE* Of course, someone who has time and gets paid to write articles comes to the same conclusion, and I find it moments after I post.