On Sun, 6 Jul 2008, Robert Naiman wrote:
> Could one (crudely) estimate an economic value to the right-wing pull
> of major media? In other words, with what deficit does a Democratic
> Presidential candidate begin, if the candidate runs even slightly to
> the left of the political line of the Washington Post
I don't think so. For this to be true, you'd have to find at least one (and hopefully several) instances where the Democrat spent as much or more and lost. I'm not sure you can find a single case of such an instance. Almost always the winner is the one who spends more. And in the case of Gore, the exception goes against you: the Dem spent less but got more popular votes -- hardly evidence of a quantifiable economic hole in the sense you are describing it.
Here's a place where you can look at the comparative spending figures for each presidential campaign:
http://www.buyingofthepresident.org/index.php/the_hanna_project/
Michael