GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign, in conjunction with his super PAC and the Republican National Committee, announced Thursday it raised $76.8 million in May, outpacing the more than $60 million raised by the Obama campaign over the same period.
In a statement, the Romney campaign said it had $107 million on hand after May’s haul. The Obama campaign raised more than $60 million in May, but has not announced how much it had on hand.
"Our strong fundraising is a sign that Americans are tired of President Obama’s broken promises and want a change of direction in the White House," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. "We will continue the hard work of raising the resources to defeat President Obama so that we can elect Mitt Romney and Republicans up and down the ballot to get our country on the right track again."
But not only is Obama raising less money than Romney, his reelection campaign’s lavish spending isn’t convincing voters.
Buzzfeed reports:
In May, the Obama campaign devoted $25 million to campaign ads, most of it to a slew of positive spots highlighting his record on issues from health care to the auto-bailout. One featured an Ohio autoworker hailing Obama for "sticking his neck out" for the industry. In another, Obama explains why he decided to bail out the car companies. A third is simply an animated chart showing job growth under Obama’s tenure in office, ending with a text overlay "Do we really want to reverse course now?"
The investment has not paid off, by the standard measure of ads’ effectiveness, polling. While Mitt Romney’s numbers jumped in May — largely the result of him solidifying support among Republicans after the primary — Obama’s numbers barely moved in some surveys; in others, they went down. Obama averaged a 47-percent job approval rating in May — the same as in April — according to Gallup surveys. In a head-to-head with Romney nationally Obama’s numbers remained within the margin of error. And in a series of swing states like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Colorado, Obama ceded ground to Romney. The Republican candidate also pulled even with Obama in swing states like Nevada, Colorado, and Iowa in the latest NBC News/Marist poll.
The recent polls "would suggest that the [Obama] ads had no effect or the opposite effect," said Republican pollster Whit Ayers.