It isn’t just candidate-specific PACs that are dominating the airwaves this cycle. | REUTERS Study: Outside ad buys up 1,600%

Outside group spending on political ads is up 1,600 percent in the Republican primary, compared to this point in the 2008 race, new research shows.

The surge in spending is in large part because of the rise of super PACs, the study from the Wesleyan Media Project found.


Nearly half of the ads on the airwaves were paid for by super PACs this cycle, while ads sponsored by candidates are down 40 percent. In all, the volume of ads aired has increased slightly, 2 percent, over the last cycle.

Romney’s campaign has spent about $7 million so far this cycle, compared to $28 million ahead of 2008. And though his overall number of ads has decreased, he’s dominating his competitors. In Florida, Romney and outside groups who support him had paid for almost 13,000 television ads, as of last week, most of them paid for by a pro-Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future. Newt Gingrich and affiliated outside groups had only aired about 200 spots. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul aren’t in the TV ad game at all in the Sunshine State.

“What you’re seeing in Florida is that the vast majority of viewers across the media markets are getting bombarded by pro-Romney ads, and there are very few pro-Gingrich ads to counteract them,” said Erika Fowler, a government professor at Wesleyan who was a researcher on the study.

Restore Our Future has been the most active super PAC in the race so far. The group dropped about $8 million on about 13,500 ads in the primary states Iowa, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona and Michigan.

And it isn’t just candidate-specific PACs that are dominating the airwaves. Two of the biggest conservative super PACs not affiliated with a specific candidate, American Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity, have spent about $8.8 million on ads so far around the country, according to the report.

So far, the Obama campaign has spent $1.4 million on over 5,000 ads targeting voters in swing states like Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Virginia, according to the report.

“[GOP groups] are clearly going after Obama,” Fowler said. “It’s clear, based on the markets they’re targeting, that they’re going after key battleground states and they’re targeting specific media markets not entire states.