The most interesting figure available to us today, as we pour over the 2nd quarter financial disbursements, is the average burn rate, which is calculated by adding the money spent plus ddebt, and dividing that by the amount of money raised for the primary elections.
In Obama's case, that's $16M spent + 0.92M debt divided by $32M raised -- or 53%.
Even though Obama spent more than Clinton -- either a little if you count debt or a lot -- he managed to keep half of what we took in. His fundraising will simmer down a bit in the third quarter, but it's fairly easy to imagine that he'll gave $25M or so in the bank come January, which will give him more than enough money to blanket the early (and later) primary states with those biographical ads that Obama's team loves to make.
Clinton burned through 73 cents out of every primary dollar she raised. That's a lot, but it's still an impressive figure. John Edwards spent 74 cents out of every dollar raised; Bill Richardson spent about 71 cents for every dollar raised.
Joe Biden spent a whopping 104% of his receipts, and Chris Dodd spent nearly 133% of his primary money raised.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney spent nearly 100% of what he raised -- he had to kick in $5M or else his burn rate would have approached Dodd-like levels. John McCain spent 128% of his receipts. Rudy Giuliani saved 28 cents on every dollar with a burn rate of 72%.
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That's the power of having grassroots appeal, like Obama does, which can translate into basically unsolicited contributions over the internet.
Traditional fundraising can take as much as .50 off the dollar just for printing, mailing, etc. When Obama pulls in something like $10 million through his website, that translates into lower burn rates.
I'm not sure we can safely call Clinton the frontrunner. She has poll numbers, but try to find an analyst who doesn't admit early polling is mostly an exercise in name awareness. Think where she'd be if she hadn't contributed $10 million from her Senate campaign account.
Posted by PLM | July 16, 2007 1:03 PM