Trends in political advertising.

[Worldtraveller]

Maybe it's just the ads I see/hear, but I have noticed a distinct trend in the last few weeks. It's not surprising, given all the studies on authoritarians and politics, but definitely more noticeable than past elections.

The pro-democratic ads are 80 - 90% 'vote for our candidate' type ads. They tout the accomplishments, will usually have some basic pablum about how they support the working class/families, and similar buzzwords, but are generally positive. The rest tend to be negative ads against their republican opponents. They usually focus on their past work in politics, and occasionally will link them to major donors. These ads almost always are still for a specific dem candidate, though, and will end with the typical "I'm Bob Barker, and I approve this ad," type language.

I've yet to hear a republican ad that actually mentions a republican candidate. All of them (literally, 100%) are simple attack ads on a democratic candidate running for office. In addition, the language and tone of them are completely different, even from the democratic 'attack' ads. They have ominous music, and that tone of voice like they're sharing some horrible secret. One of the most amusing was for AZ senate or representative and 'this candidate openly admitted to being pro-socialist' as if they had admitted to eating roasted white babies at a $1k/plate dinner. It's really amusing the simplistic and obvious tactics in these ads, but I suppose they're effective, given the target audience.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In Ohio, the Sherrod Brown ads against Rennacci have kept hammering on his lack of paying taxes and getting into trouble over it. The funny thing is, why didn't Rennacci's opponent hammer that. Regardless, I haven't seen many "I'm Sherrod Brown, so vote for me because I'm awesome." Pretty much just the typical negative ad. I haven't seen much in the way of ads for the Ohio Governorship.

 

[phands]

In the UK and Ireland, political advertising is (rightfully) forbidden, although Parties are allowed a few Party Political Broadcasts for a short period before an election. In the EU many countries disallow paid-for adverts on radio or TV, because they see what happens in the US when rich interested parties buy air-time, making fairness impossible.
The US should just ban it, too. I won't be holding my breath.

In a similar vein, medicines cannot be advertised in the UK and Ireland, which cleans up the advert slots a lot. Sadly, insurance advertising is permitted :-(

 

[dismal]

Let's not forget the Russians stole the last US presidential election with a few hundred thousand in facebook ads, which did not even clearly support any particular candidate. Seems to me that if you're one of the people who spent over a billion dollars on advertising and lost you'd want to copy that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Disagree. I've got a door hanger around here that's comparing the candidates for two races, how they stand on a variety of positions. It seems basically truthful, non-attacking. (Never mind that to me it's a list of why to vote for the other guy!)

However, I am registered Republican (and how you are registered is available to anyone who pays the processing fee), this could have been something they thought was reinforcement of my leanings. A fair number of stealth candidates expose themselves this way.