Political advertising

The dominant form of candidate communication with the electorate

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”

http://www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_00/adv382j/derrellwilson/p2/politics.html

Eisenhower Answers America

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

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

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

Issues

Proportion of ads emphasizing issues

Fear appeals

Bush 85% 19%

Kerry 79% 5%

2004 Issue Mentions (source: Kaid)

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

2004 Candidate character mentions (source: Kaid)

Negative v. positive

• There has been a significant increase in negativity over the last 30 years

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

Positive v. negative

• Positive ads tend to focus on the present or future

• Negative ads tend to focus on the past and express anger

2000 [all] elections(Wisconsin Ad Project)

Overall appeals

Ad themes 2004 (source: Kaid)

• http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/

• http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

Attack ads 2004 (source: Kaid)

Personally attack opponent

Anonymous attack on opponent

Attack on issues

Bush 0% 95% 92%

Kerry 30% 62% 59%

Goldstein, “Lessons learned”

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

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

Appeals in presidential campaign advertising

Verbal content 2004

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”

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

• http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/

• http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

Incumbent strategies

Bush Kerry

Use of symbolic trappings 15% 0%

Presidency stands for legitimacy

12% 0%

Competency and the office

25% 5%

Charisma and the office 5% 0%

Emphasizing accomplishments

25% 12%

Above-the-trenches posture

7% 0%

Depending on surrogates to speak

5% 8%

Challenger strategies

Bush Kerry

Calling for changes 3% 59%

Speaking to traditional values

31% 13%

Taking the offensive position

19% 16%

Emphasizing optimism 31% 28%

Attacking the record of the opponent

61% 54%

Types of ads

• Diamond and Bates:– ID spots– Argument spots

• Candidate causes, ideas, concerns

– Attack spots– Visionary spots

Types of commercials

• Devlin– Talking heads

– Negative spots

– Cinema verite

– Documentary spots

– Man-in-the street spots

– Testimonials

– Independent spots

• Joslyn: “Benevolent leader” spots

Nonverbal content

Production techniquesBush Kerry

Computer graphics 92% 80%

Slow motion 24% 41%

Fast motion 15% 1%

Freeze frames 14% 14%

Split screens 17% 26%

Superimpositions 20% 13%

Use of stills 7% 30%

Black and white changes

26% 16%

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

• http://www.rbistrategies.com/content/37/rbi-strategies-and-research-winspollierdquo-awards

• http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/

• http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/

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