Political advertising

1. Political advertising The dominant form of candidate communication with the electorate

2. Political advertising • “Televised political advertising is now the dominant form of communication between candidates and voters in the presidential elections and in most statewide contests” • Kaid, “Political advertising”

3. Eisenhower Answers America http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_00/adv382j/derrellwilson/p2/politics.html

4. Undecideds • The ‘swing vote’ in elections is made up largely of those persons who are relatively ill-informed, have a less-developed ideology and are swayed by late events, advertising and non-policy news • They often decide the elections, though, and are a major target of candidates • Going negative can work here

5. Content of political advertising • Close analysis of the actual content of political advertising has been rather limited • Relatively recent area of study • Focused heavily on the presidential campaign • Availability of historic advertising • Most money, most sophisticated advertising • Popular and scholarly focus on presidential contest

6. Issues v. images • Most advertising focuses on issues rather than image • 78% of 2000 presidential campaign ads (historic high) • However, “the percentage of spots with specific policy issue information was much lower than the overall number of issue spots” • Vague, general statements • Claims without context (often misleading or even false) • Researchers have come to conclude that the two are intertwined and inseparable

7. Issues

8. 2004 Issue Mentions (source: Kaid)

9. Kaid: “The Television Advertising Battleground in the 2004 Preseidential Election”

10. 2004 Candidate character mentions (source: Kaid)

11. Negative v. positive • There has been a significant increase in negativity over the last 30 years

12. Positive v. Negative • Challengers are more likely to engage in negative advertising, while incumbents tend to be positive • Challenger criticizing record, incumbent defending it • Attack ads are more common in competitive races • Most races against incumbents are long shots • Negative ads are more likely to be sponsored by parties or advocacy groups • Negative ads have more substantive issue information

13. Positive v. negative • Positive ads tend to focus on the present or future • Negative ads tend to focus on the past and express anger

14. 2000 [all] elections(Wisconsin Ad Project)

15. Overall appeals

16. Ad themes 2004 (source: Kaid)

17. http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/ • http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

18. Attack ads 2004 (source: Kaid)

19. Goldstein, “Lessons learned”

21. Emotion • Commonly seen by professionals as the most important and effective appeal • People are not persuaded/moved by rational appeals • Most political commercial use some form of emotional appeal

22. Emotion • The majority of political advertising relates in some way to emotion • Tony Schwartz • Frank Luntz • What types of emotion are most often used? • Fear • Pride • Especially national pride • Hope • Love • Family

23. Appeals in presidential campaign advertising

24. Verbal content 2004

25. Emotion and cultural symbols • Common use of non-rational appeals • Clearly a successful strategy • Spots contain an enormous amount of emotional content • “more emotional proof than logical or ethical proof” • According to Hart “one must never underestimate the importance of that which advertising most reliably delivers—political emotion”

26. Emotional appeals • “Winners use more words indicating activity and optimism than losers. Losers, alternately, demonstrated less certainty but higher realism in their spots.” • Ballotti & Kaid, 2000

27. http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/ • http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

28. Incumbent strategies

29. Challenger strategies

30. Types of ads • Diamond and Bates: • ID spots • Argument spots • Candidate causes, ideas, concerns • Attack spots • Visionary spots

31. Types of commercials • Devlin • Talking heads • Negative spots • Cinema verite • Documentary spots • Man-in-the street spots • Testimonials • Independent spots • Joslyn: “Benevolent leader” spots

32. Nonverbal content

33. Production techniques

34. Female candidates • Female candidates tend to focus more on issues than men do, and to emphasize domestic issues • May be more due to greater number of Democrats who are women than to gender

35. http://www.rbistrategies.com/content/37/rbi-strategies-and-research-winspollierdquo-awardshttp://www.rbistrategies.com/content/37/rbi-strategies-and-research-winspollierdquo-awards • http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/ • http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

36. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2008/reportersblog/campaign_ads/http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2008/reportersblog/campaign_ads/