Romney's hoping a last minute ad surge will w
Romney's hoping a last minute ad surge will wReuters

If the old conventional wisdom holds true that elections are determined by how much money is spent by each candidate than Republican candidate Mitt Romney has a bit of catching up to do. 

New data shows that Obama has been outspending Romney in recent weeks on television ads in all of the key swing states. In Denver, Obama ran seven ads for every five Romney ran. In Florida the difference was even greater, with Obama's ads outnumbering Romney's by almost 50 percent according to data compiled by the political advertising monitoring firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

The disparity has not only emerged in recent weeks - since Romney came out as the clear Republican nominee in April, Obama ran almost triple the amount of commercials as his rival, with 347,000 total ads versus 121,000 for Romney.

According to the New York Times, Obama has also used cable television advertising to his advantage, targeting young  and minority voters by advertising to sports fans on ESPN and the African-American community on BET. Obama ran cable television commercials unopposed for most of the year and is now on twice the number of cable channels as his rival. 

It was previously thought that Romney and his wealthy backers would outpace Obama in regards to campaign funds and advertising. However, while Obama's strategy was to gain an early lead and try to sway voters months before the election, Romney's strategy seems to be the complete opposite. Romney is employing a surge tactic, waiting until the weeks leading up to the election to bombard voters with ads. He's also betting heavily on the upcoming debates, predicting they will be game changers that will shift the electorate in his favor. 

For now, Obama's strategy seems to be working as polls in most of the contested states have shifted favor to his direction over the past month. Romney's camp has already pledged to invest many more millions in advertising over the coming weeks, hoping that the surge will indeed pay off.