Time for the ‘Top Fives’ overview of all independent expenditures for the last week. Top Fives posts present a summary of some of the highlights of the past seven days from five basic perspectives.
In general, spending across the board – House, Senate, even Presidential – was far below levels established in previous weeks. Despite the depressed spending, trends and relative spending levels remained fairly constant.
49 distinct groups disclosed a total of $13.05 million – less than half of last week’s $27.6 million total.
Top Five Organizations:
As in previous weeks, Republican-affiliated groups dominated the independent expenditures. Right-leaning Americans for Prosperity and NRCC made the top five last week, as did the left-aligned Majority PAC. Two new groups – NRSC and SEIU PEA – made CBMG’s top five for the first time, despite being frequent disclosers.
Top Five States:
Wisconsin takes the top spot for the second week running. Florida and Montana stay near the top again, with newcomers North Dakota and North Carolina rounding out the top five states.
Top Five Candidates for the House:
Throughout the week, groups disclosed $1.48 million supporting and opposing candidates for the lower house. This total represents a slight decline in House-related disclosures from the previous week ($1.7million).
Top Five Candidates for the Senate:
Tommy Thompson makes a return to the top of the list along with five newcomers to the upper five Senate spending slots. In all, groups spent a total of £2.9 million on Senate contests – a large decline from the $6.4 million disclosed two weeks ago.
And finally, here are the weekly total for the race between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney.
Anti-Mr. Obama spending accounted for just over 60% of the total spending for the entire week across all elections. Accentuating this imbalance, anti-Obama disclosures eclipsed the anti-Romney spending 13 times over. As we have stated in previous weeks, Mr. Romney is experiencing IE spending on the level we see for Senate candidates, whereas anti-Mr. Obama disclosures form the gravitational center of the new campaign finance universe.
