Politics and Advertising

Politics and Advertising

With the Presidential election nearing it’s hard to not notice all of the television ads “supporting” both candidates. It seems to me that different parties use commercials more to slam opponents rather than to support their own campaign. These ads have become more and more negative over time. It then raises the issue, are these ads really helpful in bringing in votes to either candidate? Are they positively portraying either candidate? Are they worth all of the money that goes into the advertisements? I don’t think that the negativity is the answer when it comes to politics.

Political ads are one of the largest single expenditures by candidates and they generate considerable news coverage. Many people are not happy with the quality of information presented in the ads or the tone of political discourse. Many critics worry that the 30 second commercials may lead to campaigns that are overly negative. Looking at the campaign ads in this year’s presidential election the prominent campaign ads were more negative than in previous races. With both parties running open races with large numbers of candidates, negativity levels reached above historic levels. With this finding many are wondering if this general election will provide the quality political discourse needed by voters. According to an analysis of prominent nomination ads, 61 percent of the 2008 Democratic ads were negative, compared to 43 percent of the Republican ads. Both rates are higher than the average ad negativity of 31 percent for Democrats and 36 percent for Republicans in nominating contests from 1972-2008. Prominent ads were defined as those attracting major media attention.

It is obvious that each party focuses on different topics than the other. Republicans were more likely to focus on personal qualities (57 percent of all appeals), while Democrats emphasized domestic issues (44 percent) and personal qualities (39 percent). Surprisingly, given the importance of the Iraq War and the...

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