My nagging suspicion that Obama perhaps has written off Erie County in the presidential primary tomorrow has been validated. A very revealing graphic on nytimes.com this morning shows that even with the very low TV ad rates in the Erie market, out of the nearly 12,000 television spots he has run in Pennsylvania, only 9% have run in Erie. Compare that to the most expensive market, Philadelphia, where nearly one out of every four PA spots ran.
If you are just shrugging your shoulders, saying “so what, Philly is bigger than Erie,” you need to remember that we are talking about frequency as opposed to pairs of eyes reached. Let’s say that it costs $500 to reach 40,000 people in Erie, and $5,000 to reach 400,000 people in Philly. What this statistic is saying that Barack was willing to spend about $12,500 to talk to those same 400,000 people 2.5 times more often than his $500 that spoke to the 40,000 in Erie once. According to the Times, he ran over 1,050 spots in Erie through last Thursday, which is no slouch of a buy, mind you. Meanwhile he ran over 2,700 spots in Philly. Can you say saturation?
For her part, Mrs. Clinton ran nearly one-third of her commercials in Philadelphia. But since she’s nearly broke, that translates into only under 1,600 spots through Thursday. Erie got to see Hillary’s “3 am” ad and others just under 550 times.
He also saturated the Philadelphia area with appearances. I think the local Obama camp was getting nervous as they waited for an Erie appearance date. He certainly was taking his time, finally getting here on Friday morning with a visit to Erie Bolt and then a townhall meeting at Penn State Behrend. For a candidate with such rock star status, I do not get why he didn’t go to the Tullio Arena, or Bayfront Convention Center, where he could have satisfied the high demand for tickets to the event. Either they didn’t have the manpower to process a 5000 person crowd, or didn’t want to pay the Convention Center Authority, or both.
Anyway the lateness of the visit, and the fact that his next closest appearance was in Beaver County seems to show that he is not hoping for much out of NWPA. Tomorrow night we’ll know if his Philadelphia-centric strategy works.
Erie, Media, Nation April 21st, 2008
April 21st, 2008 at 11:27 am
Once you insert dollars and stats, the argument goes awry.
The NY Times has a nice graphic there.
So does Wiki on the last election like this, 2004 Bush/Kerry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania,_2004
The entire state is virtual Bush Red.
For Blue, it says:
“The cities of Philadelphia, Allentown, Pittsburgh, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and Erie went Democratic, while the entire rest of the state voted Bush, by varying margins”.
Note the order of the cities.
Note their importance.
Note that with a handful of counties, Kerry pulled the whole state. (remember: Osama Bin Laden promised to make terror-free targets of states that voted Kerry over Bush; let’s factor in all the trivia).
New York and New Jersey folks are pouring into our eastern counties like it was Florida Retirement Central.
The cost of living and taxes make LeHigh and Northampton Counties (in particular) extremely attractive commutes to NYC.
Housing prices skyrocketed on the east side of the state.
This is not part of the credit mess, or bubble.
This was a decision to forego million dollar apartments in NYC that are the size of an Erie living room.
The $250,000 homes of Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton (they call the area “ABE”) ramped to $500,000 fast and held. They can not build these “bargains” for NY and NJ folks fast enough.
The candidates follow the people likely to yield victory.
Erie is a declining market for the election process.
The trips here by Hillary and friends is an act of desperation from being the ONLY candidate a year ago, to being the defeated candidate if she loses PA.
She had the state by 20 points a moment ago; now depleted to 4 to 6 points. The country has state-by-state found a return to Clinton, a merry-go-round ride to pass on.
Pa has trimmed their fondness accordingly.