Two of the most positive developments in the blogosphere are, first, the use of quantitative data to make points, a tactic used all too rarely by many established pundits; and secondly, the ability of multiple individuals to collaborate and improve each others' work.  I'm glad to participate in both trends.

Over at OpenLeft, Chris Bowers has posted some interesting numbers--the ad spending by the McCain and Obama campaigns in every state that either one has spent money in.  The data is very interesting, and Bowers has some good observations on it, so I'd recommend checking it out.

 When I was reading that post, I thought to myself that it would be more useful if we adjusted for population.  I decided to do so myself, using the voting-eligible population figures from the U.S. Elections Project at George Mason, .  Here are the results.  The numbers represent ad dollars per 100,000 residents.

A few observations: 

First of all, except for a few outliers, Obama's spending is tightly clustered from from about 20 to about 40 thousand dollars/100K residents.  The figures are not broken down by media market, but I suspect that the Obama buy in West Virginia might be meant to target southern Ohio just as much as West Virginia itself, if not more so--it's not a state that's necessarily favorable to Obama specifically.  On the one hand, primary results don't necessarily predict general election results; on the other hand,  26%.   The other big outlier for Obama? Virginia, where's he's spending $50K for every 100,000 residents, almost 25% more than in his next-highest state (Florida, in a somewhat unconventional move). 

For McCain, the biggest state by far is Nevada, with about $75K per 100,000 people.  This is $33,000 more than Obama, the biggest margin for McCain in any state.  Obama's margins, meanwhile, are usually higher than McCain's.  He leads by $43K in Florida--where McCain has yet to spend anything at all--and by about $30K in Indiana and Georgia.  Feints? Or states that he believes he can legitimately put in play? It'll definitely be worthwhile to revisit this chart in a few months once the air war has really heated up.