Obama Raises $150 million in Sept.

Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a number that no other political candidate has ever reached in a single month. The campaign released this figure today on the same day of Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama.

Campaign manager David Plouffe said the campaign had added 632,000 new donors in September, for a total of 3.1 million total contributors to the campaign. He said the average donation was $86. What is shocking about this is that most of these contributors don't donate the maximum amount that campaign finance laws allow, they are giving $20 to $100 at a time to his campaign, which is very unusual in presidential races.

These kinds of numbers are possible because Obama opted out of public financing--he is the first candidate in history to do so--and is virtually unrestricted in his fundraising abilities. John McCain, on the other hand, chose to take public financing which limits him to $84 million dollars in the last two months of the campaign.

These new fundraising figures raise Obama's total amount of money raised to $605 million, which is the most money raised in any presidential campaign. Ever. His previous record for fundraising was in August, when he raised $65 million.

Obama's massive financial advantage has allowed him to outspend McCain in every single battleground state. He is currently outspending McCain on TV advertising four-to-one. With this advantage, he has secured strong footholds in all of the states that John Kerry won in 2004 along with Iowa and New Mexico. But he has also been able to expand the contest to reliably Republican states such as Indiana, North Carolina, and West Virginia, and has forced McCain and the RNC to spend their money defensively.

Plouffe announced that they would be spending some $5 million dollars in West Virginia in the 16 days before election day, which could go a long way in buying TV advertising, seeing as it is a fairly cheap state to advertise in. Plouffe also hinted that they might be expanding even further in states such as North Dakota and Georgia, two other reliably Republican states where polls have shown a tightening race.