Sought-after swing state residents are voting with their wallets largely for President Obama, according to recent campaign finance filings with the Federal Election Commission -- but Mitt Romney's campaign is tickled to be outraising the incumbent in any purple states at all, and the GOP front-runner has racked up one surprise blue state win: Massachusetts.
"It's amazing that we're leading a sitting president in any state," said Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams. "We're running a Republican primary and we're in a field of Republicans competing for the same resources."
Of Romney's $1.2 million home-state haul to Obama's $786,955, Williams added, "We're always proud to have strong support in the Bay State."
But Democratic consultant Steve McMahon, based in Washington, D.C., said, "Massachusetts doesn't often veer from a Democratic presidential candidate, and this year will be no exception."
In swing states, Obama led Romney in fundraising in eight states to Romney's four, raking in tens of thousands of dollars more than Romney in the hotly contested states of Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
For example, Obama raised $90,000 in Iowa in 2011, according to the FEC filing, while Romney raised $56,965. Romney, meanwhile, carried Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Virginia in fundraising last year.
"In the fourth quarter of 2011, 583,000 donors gave to the campaign, 200,000 of whom had never given before," said an Obama campaign official, who said much of the $68 million raised in total came from smaller donors. "The average contribution this quarter was $55, and 98 percent of our contributions were $250 or less."
The FEC state-by-state numbers don't include donors who contributed less than $200, because small-amount donors don't have to provide their addresses.
Both Republican and Democratic consultants said the donations don't necessarily equal votes.
"It's very interesting but not very predictive," McMahon said.
"We will, however, be the best-funded presidential campaign in history."
Michael Dennehy, a New Hampshire-based GOP consultant, said of Romney, "He's not going to the battleground states to raise money, he's going to the places he can get money."
