I never said that Dragons would have greater spiritual power than Balrogs. In fact I have said that Balrogs would probably have had greater spiritual power than Dragons.
However, I have said that I do not think that the spiritual power of a Balrog would be so overwhealming as to be decisive in a fight with a Dragon.
On a related note (sort of) to what obloquy and littlemanpoet were talking about, the nature of the power of Dragons seemed to be geared towards deception, ensnaring, and trickery. For instance, Glaurung ensnared Turin with his gaze and tricked him into doing some rather silly things (like passing up an Elven wench [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ). Smaug was attempting to trick Bilbo into revealing himself and the whole plot.
littlemanpoet:
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This makes a difference as to the nature of the spirits of Dragons: if Tolkien based his Dragons on a tradition, we may research that tradition and write about it on this thread and get it to a 3rd page!
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If you would care to get the ball rolling on that subject, I'd be happy to oblige. I'm not entirely sure what direction you would like to go, but I think that the dragon that had the most influence on his writing was the one in Beowulf, although dragons in Germanic, and Norse mythology in general would probably also qualify.