Nearly a million dollars a day sounds like a lot of money, but when it comes to political advertising, it just doesn’t buy you much. A case in point: the recently-completed, record-setting, eighty-five-million-dollars-in-ninety-days Republican ad blitz aimed at ‘defining’ John Kerry as a flip-flopping, tax-raising, weak-kneed liberal. Was it worth the unprecedented cost?
That depends on whom you ask.
The spin from Democrats like Mark Mellman, a key Kerry adviser, is that the Republicans’ multi-million media strategy has only hurt President Bush’s standing among the electorate.
“The reality is that that they have just finished spending tens of millions of dollars on negative advertising, and at the end of it, Kerry is in a stronger position than Bush,” says pollster Mellman “The reality is that Bush’s ‘unfavorable’ rating is up, and his favorability is down — particularly in the battleground states. The reality is that 85 million dollars in negative advertising backfired — damaging the President, and not Senator Kerry.”
Not so, says Bush campaign media director Mark McKinnon, “Kerry’s favorable ratings have dropped dramatically.” He offers as support Pew Research Center findings that show a net negative change of 21 points in Kerry’s favorable ratings, and a net negative change of 2 for the President, as well as Fox News polls showing a net negative shift for Kerry of twelve points and net negative shift of one for the President.
Mellman counters that “In the states where the ads ran, Bush’s favorables are down 5 percent and unfavorables up 5 percent — a 10 percent swing in the swing states — whereas in states where they didn’t run ads, his numbers remain constant. So he’s been damaged where he’s run those strongly negative ads — and has polled pretty much the same in states where he didn’t advertise.
“Another way to look at it is that, according to national NPR polling, the race is extremely close nationally, with Bush running one point ahead,” Mellman notes. “But in the battleground states — where the ad blitz was concentrated — John Kerry is leading by nine points!”
Stuck in a Tug of War
As ABC News political director Mark Halperin, one of the savviest operatives among the mainstream media, probably sums it up best. “The only thing harder than deciding if the ads are effective is to take the whole giant stew of this campaign and figure out precisely where we are. Nobody’s winning the tug of war,” Halperin, says “But it’s still worth pulling, because if you stop, the other guy keeps on and wins the war — so there’s no way either side can stop all the advertising now.
“The polls haven’t changed much either way, really, despite the avalanche of bad news for Bush and the record negative ad onslaught against Kerry.” Halperin concludes.
So what does all the confusing competing data mean? To Mark McKinnon, it’s simple. “Since Pew began measuring the level of enthusiasm among supporters for presidential candidates in 1988,” says the Bush man, “John Kerry has the lowest positive support ever recorded while President Bush has the highest.”
McKinnon points out that “much of our advertising focused on President Bush having firm beliefs and providing steady leadership in the war on terror and on the economy while Kerry has a twenty-year record of voting for higher taxes and against the weapons systems that are helping us fight and win the war on terror.” By highlighting “Kerry’s frequent flip flops,” McKinnon says, the Bush spots have lead voters to believe that the Senator lacks core principles and has a substantial history of raising taxes.
“When the ABC/Washington Post Poll asked the question, ‘Who takes a position and sticks with it?’ George Bush led John Kerry by 34 points,” McKinnon says. “And after our ads on Kerry and taxes, Gallup asked voters if Kerry would be likely to raise income taxes. Sixty percent of voters said yes, 26 percent said no.
“We have achieved our objectives for the first phase of the campaign,” he states adamantly. “After the primaries, Kerry was up anywhere from five to eleven points in public polls. People now have a lot of questions about John Kerry and they are unenthusiastic in their support. Today, when you average seven public polls published in the last two weeks, the President is up one.”
Dismissing ‘Externalities’
What’s the bottom line? “Americans are more optimistic about the economy than they were three months ago and the President’s approval ratings on Iraq are improving,” McKinnon concludes. “So to sum up, I guess you can say we are feeling extremely good about where we are right now!”
To which Kerry’s camp replies that their candidate’s negatives may be up — but largely among Republicans who wouldn’t have voted for him anyway. And they dismiss the Republican contention that “externalities” such as the Iraq War and the 9/11 Commission hearings — and the overwhelming attention ‘free media’ paid to them — detracted from the impact of the GOP’s multimillion-dollar ‘paid media’ campaign.
“Only in places they have been spending ad dollars are their numbers going down,” says Dem strategist Mellman. “So what that tells us is that their negative ad blitz is the problem — not free media and what is being reported about so-called ‘externalities.’
“No other elected incumbent president has ever been under 50 percent at this stage and gone on to win,” Mellman continues. “And usually they are leading the challenger by double digits nationally — not in a dead heat as we are. Historically, the challenger always catches up after the convention. We’re already there — and ahead where it really counts. So to sum up, I guess you can say we are feeling extremely good about where was are right now!
Between the Floor and the Ceiling
“I’m not sure what the final advertising dollar figure will be, but it may well set a record in the end,” says ABC’s Halperin. “The election, however, is essentially all about the president. He has both a floor and a ceiling, neither of which he can escape, due to the twin issues of Iraq and the war on terror. The floor support for Bush — the number he will not go below –is maybe 44-45 percent. That percentage of people will support him no matter what because of how they feel on those issues. But those same issues create a ceiling as well, one he cannot go above — say, it’s 52 percent.
“As far as advertising is concerned,” says Halperin, “Look, there’s no California, no New York, Texas, or Illinois…it’s just nineteen states, and at the end it may well be fewer. The ad process is more efficient than ever, targeting is better, and finally, the whole point of raising money is to buy television ad time. That being said, both from polling and gathering anecdotal evidence from around the country — and I rely more heavily on anecdotal evidence than polls — both things convince me that the Bush ads aimed at defining Kerry as a flip flopping liberal worked.”
On the their hand, notes Halperin, “The Kerry positive ads have undone some of that damage. But the Bush camp certainly got some return on their investment, in that the primary goal of the campaign was to define Kerry before he could define himself. As I traveled around the country, I often found the negative ads of Kerry as a flip flopper taking hold and being said back to me by many people. In addition, the Bush team did the best job ever in coordinating their paid media with speeches and surrogate sound bites so that the free media coverage of them echoed their paid media. So, to conclude, I think there’s no question that the Bush ads have had an effect,” says Halperin. “Enough that they could help influence, but not decide the election — because while they’ve succeeded in defining Kerry, that definition is still ephemeral.”
Post-Convention Ad Strategy
Meanwhile, despite its uncertain returns, the both sides appear set to continue advertising at a pace — and price — never seen before. “Post-convention, each candidate gets $75 million dollars more to spend,” says one senior Kerry adviser. “In addition, the two parties are each allowed to spend sixteen million dollars in coordination with the candidate. Plus they are allowed to make additional non-coordinated expenditures as well, which will mean millions more. Plus, of course, independent groups and 527 organizations will spend further millions.”
And when I asked Mark McKinnon what lessons the GOP has learned thus far, he replied in his usual forthright manner. “We’ve learned that advertising is most effective when it is not overpowered by external events. There’s no question that our advertising was most effective the first six weeks after Kerry gained the nomination, when there were not a lot of big external news events competing. Fortunately, that is when we spent the bulk our spring advertising dollars.”
And what are the Bush campaign plans for post-convention ad buys?
“That would be telling,” laughed the president’s media man. “Frankly, we are reluctant to reveal our strategy to our opponents in your article.”
