For months, watching television has meant watching political ads, with candidates frequently lobbing attacks at one another.
While ads will continue to run through Election Day on Nov. 8 – meaning total advertising spending will still increase – experts already estimate the amount spent in political ads this season will set a record at $9 billion.
Experts also say the mass amount of advertisements could sway tight races in a number of battleground states.
At stake is control of both the House of Representatives and the now evenly-split Senate, and President Joe Biden’s sweeping priority list for the final two years of his first term in office. Those priorities include protecting access to abortions; tackling voting rights; promoting construction of domestic factories; addressing climate change; forgiving student debt and more.
Should Republicans retake both chambers of Congress, many of Biden’s agenda items will likely never make it to his desk.
Republicans and Democrats are focusing on vastly different topics in the leadup to the midterm elections. Republicans frequently mention Biden’s failed policies, a struggling economy and rising crime, while Democrats hope a focus on abortion rights will attract both liberal voters as well as those possibly still on the fence.
Just between September 19 – Oct. 2, the Wesleyan Media Project tracked tens of thousands of political ads shown to Americans, costing millions of cumulative dollars – and the vast majority of the spending is in some of the nation’s closest races.
Republicans, Democrats focus on different issues
Republicans’ advertisements often talk about President Biden, the economy and cost-of-living across the country, topics that reliably poll at the top of voters’ priorities this election season.
“Thanks to Joe Biden, food, fuel, everything costs too much,” Mike Crapo, the Republican Senate incumbent running for reelection in Idaho, said in a recent advertisement.
Maine’s Republican Party last week released a television spot placing the blame for rising costs in the state on Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who is running against Republican Paul LePage and Independent Sam Hunkler.
“We’re paying more for food, gas, and rent. But Janet Mills wants to take even more of our money,” the ad said in part. “Mills created a costly new grocery tax. Mills’s tax could cost us almost $60 more per month.”
And in Wisconsin, where incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is running against Democrat Mandela Barnes, the National Republican Senate Committee paid for an advertisement claiming Wisconsinites are “paying the price for Biden’s massive deficit spending.”
“Five thousand dollars a year. That’s the burden of Joe Biden’s inflation tax on Wisconsin families,” the ad proclaims in part. “They can’t afford it.”
According to a late October analysis from the Washington Post of political advertisements aired since Labor Day, Republicans have spent over $53 million on inflation-related ads, and a total of $89 million focused on taxation and other economic issues. Around $63 million was spent in ads targeting Biden directly.
While once-skyrocketing prices on home goods and gasoline have stabilized somewhat in recent months, inflation is far higher than it’s been in decades, putting Democrats largely on defense in the midterm elections.
“Advertising, we always like to say, if it matters, matters at the margin. That doesn’t mean the margin doesn’t matter,” Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor at Wesleyan University and director of the Wesleyan Media Project, told Spectrum News. “So in really competitive contests, that means messaging can make a difference.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are focusing many of their ads on abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade this summer, hoping the issue will help buck the midterm trend that historically sees Congress shift away from the party in power in the White House.
Twenty-eight percent of Democrats’ ads focus on abortion rights, followed by healthcare and public safety, according to Kantar Campaign Media Analysis Group. As of Oct. 25, the Washington Post found Democrats spent a whopping $103 million in advertisements focusing on abortion access since Labor Day.
“Steve Chabot is obsessed with banning abortion,” a political advertisement from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said, attacking incumbent Rep. Steve Chabot for his record on the issue. “Congressman Chabot sponsored the bill that would outlaw birth control and ban all abortions, with no exceptions for rape, incest or life of the woman. He thinks nothing can stop him. Prove him wrong.”
In Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott last year signed a restrictive anti-abortion bill into law, challenger Beto O’Rourke released the final ad of his campaign on Monday centering on a woman who nearly died from sepsis when doctors refused to perform a life-saving procedure after she miscarried.
“How is this pro-life if I have to wait until I get so sick I almost die and I might not be able to have kids in the future?” Amanda Zurawski, the focus of the advertisement, said in part.
“I should not have to stand by my dying wife while Greg Abbott does nothing,” her husband, Josh Zurawski, added.
Less than 10% of Republicans’ ads mention abortion, and those that do often say Democrats are using the issue to distract voters from more important issues, namely, the economy. Democrats also reliably place abortion access higher on their list of legislative priorities than Republicans, who tend to place more importance on the economy.
“I think Democrats see abortion as being a motivator and a motivator not just maybe for their own party, but also potentially in the middle,” Franklin Fowler told Spectrum News.
In swing states, ads get personal
Perhaps reflecting their importance in national politics, the races with the most spent in advertising are Senate campaigns in the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin, followed by the Illinois governor’s race.
A similar trend has emerged in these races, where just thousands of votes could help decide the balance of power in Congress: Candidates in these battleground states tend to attack their opponents’ character rather than focusing on policy proposals.
Georgia’s Senate race between incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and former football player Herschel Walker, a Republican, has seen millions in dollars from both parties spent on television ads. As of Oct. 27, around $258 million was spent across all of Georgia’s state races, according to data from AdImpact, making it the state with the most spent on ads this cycle.
Warnock’s ads are often personal and bring up what his opponent’s ex-wife has said.
“Herschel Walker has repeatedly threatened to kill his ex-wife,” a narrator says in a 30-second television spot from political organization Georgia Honor that originally aired in August, displaying images of court records and restraining orders on the screen.
A more recent advertisement takes aim at Walker’s conflicting stance on abortion rights, a hot topic in the race after two women separately came forward alleging the former football player – who has repeatedly claimed he supports a near-total ban on abortion – paid for their own abortions in the 1990s and early 2000s, respectively. Walker has denied both allegations.
Still, the ads from Warnock came late in the campaign season, possibly reflecting worry from his team that the allegations against Walker haven’t seemed to turn off voters as much as anticipated.
Walker, meanwhile, talks about his ability to take hits, learned on the football field, and often attempts to push back at what he deems are unfair or inaccurate representations of who he is.
“Reverend Warnock is running a nast, dishonest campaign. Perfect for Washington. The Reverend doesn’t even tell my full story,” Walker said in his first television ad aired after the Daily Beast reported the allegations from the first woman. “As everyone knows, I had a real battle with mental health, even wrote a book about it, and by the grace of God, I’ve overcome it.”
Warnock has been open about his struggles with mental health, and in 2008 penned a book titled “Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.”
There’s evidence to suggest all these dueling ads in Georgia cancel each other out – and they likely won’t stop before the final vote.
“No one wants to be in a space where your opponent is out-airing you and in a contest where you’re competing over those last few fractions of a percentage point,” Franklin Fowler said in part, adding: “You’re seeking any and any and every advantage you can possibly have.”
The contest between Walker and Warnock remains neck-and-neck. According to a FiveThirtyEight average of over a half-dozen recent polls, Warnock leads Walker by just over one point.
Because of the close nature of the polls, advertisements in Georgia’s Senate race may continue past Tuesday: If neither candidate clears 50% of the vote, the race will go to a runoff, which would be held in early December. That would likely mean even more political ads coming to Georgians’ television screens for another month.
In Pennsylvania, like Georgia, the Senate candidates have taken numerous personal jabs at one another over the course of the campaign.
Democrat John Fetterman, the state’s current lieutenant governor, has tried to paint his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, as an outsider in the Keystone State, and has also criticized Oz’s stance on abortion access.
“We gotta codify Roe v. Wade, we have to make more stuff here in America, we need to expand our access to health care,” Fetterman says in a recent television advertisement from the Blue PA PAC. “If you don’t live in Pennsylvania, how can you fight for Pennsylvania? Send him back to New Jersey and send me to D.C.”
The Fetterman campaign also aired an ad the day after the first and only Senate debate in the state, which saw Fetterman use a captioning device and periodically stumble over some words as he continues to recover from a May stroke. The advertisement took aim at Oz’s comment during the debate that he wants “women, doctors, local political leaders” have a say in abortion, painting the opinion as “too extreme for Pennsylvania.”
While Oz’s campaign has taken jabs at Fetterman’s ability to lead, their official advertisements – as well as those funded by political action committees and the Republican party – focus much more on the lieutenant governor’s record on crime than his mental capacity.
“John Fetterman wants to release convicted murderers from prison,” a digital campaign advertisement said in part, adding: “We all know Fetterman loves free stuff, but we can’t let him free murderers.”
“As chairman of the Board of Pardons, Fetterman says he’s trying to get as many criminals out of prison as he can,” an advertisement, paid for by the conservative Senate Leadership Fund, said. “Far left John Fetterman is too far left. He’s dangerously liberal on crime.”
Like Georgia, the multi-millions spent in advertising across Pennsylvania just might make the difference between which candidate wins come Nov. 8.
