Political advertising

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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

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Eisenhower Answers America
http//www.ciadvertising.org/student_account/fall_
00/adv382j/derrellwilson/p2/politics.html
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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

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Issues
Proportion of ads emphasizing issues Fear appeals
Bush 85 19
Kerry 79 5
8
2004 Issue Mentions (source Kaid)
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Kaid The Television Advertising Battleground in
the 2004 Preseidential Election
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2004 Candidate character mentions (source Kaid)
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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

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2000 all elections(Wisconsin Ad Project)
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Overall appeals
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Ad themes 2004 (source Kaid)
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• http//pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/
• http//www.livingroomcandidate.org/

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Attack ads 2004 (source Kaid)
Personally attack opponent Anonymous attack on opponent Attack on issues
Bush 0 95 92
Kerry 30 62 59
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Goldstein, Lessons learned
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(No Transcript)
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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

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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

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Appeals in presidential campaign advertising
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Verbal content 2004
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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 deliverspolitical 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/

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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
29
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
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Types of ads

• Diamond and Bates
• ID spots
• Argument spots
• Candidate causes, ideas, concerns
• Attack spots
• Visionary spots

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Types of commercials

• Devlin
• Talking heads
• Negative spots
• Cinema verite
• Documentary spots
• Man-in-the street spots
• Testimonials
• Independent spots
• Joslyn Benevolent leader spots

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Nonverbal content
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Production techniques
Bush 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
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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

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• http//www.rbistrategies.com/content/37/rbi-strate
  gies-and-research-winspollierdquo-awards
• http//pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/
• http//www.livingroomcandidate.org/

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