By the Numbers! Attack Ad Spending

I put together a spreadsheet that covers the spending and voting in the 2006 Congressional races. I used that to analyze the spending on attack ads.

The NRCC was responsible for almost all of the $37 Million in Republican attacks on Democratic Congressional Candidates.

The DCCC was responsible for the vast majority of the $31 Million in attack ad spending with MoveOn.org and Emily's list contributing in a few races.

Democrats spent $17M on attacks in 18 of the pick-ups while Republicans spent $19M in those races.

More charts and conclusions below the fold.

This is the third in my series of diaries analyzing the numbers from the 2006 Congressional elections.

The database can be found at the stats_geeks_of_daily_kos yahoo group.

My entire series of graphs are available at my photoshop graphs page.

The Adwars occurred in 50 races, I excluded FL-16 and TX-22 due to the fact that the dynamics of those races were unique and therefore did not represent the normal patterns.

This shows the combined spending in all the "adwar" races.

Republicans won 20 of these races while Democrats won 26 with 2 races still undecided.

What I learned

In 2004 Democrats actually had a 1.78% advantage in average vote percentage in competitive races but the lack of challengers and gerrymandering allowed the Republicans to control the House. 2006 changed all that with the Democratic margin increasing to a 6.62% average advantage in competitive races.

We must make more race competitive in 2008 to assist our candidates up and down the ticket.

Democratic gains were widespread even in their losses.

55 Democrats were unopposed.

129 Republicans had less than $200K and were uncompetitive in Democratic districts.

10 Republicans were unopposed.

128 Democrats had less than $200K and were uncompetitive in Republican districts.

We were left with 128 competitive districts this year and Democrats picked up 30 of those with 3 undecided.

Where do we need to go from here?

I am going to push for returning to the 435 race strategy in 2008 with the addition of creating a drive intended to push for funding the 200 challengers.

We need to provide the challengers with a minimum of $200K.

I hope to create a drive where the challengers can be assured that the netroots will proved volunteers willing to spend 20 hours of their time helping these campaigns.

All I plan to ask of the candidates is a promise that they will do the work necessary to make their races competitive.