Political television advertising spending escalates, study finds

More than $300 million has been spent by candidates on television advertising in races for the U.S. House and Senate, as well as in a number of highly competitive, record-spending gubernatorial contests across the nation, according to a new study by a university political scientist.

The bulk of campaign television spending continues to be on governors’ races as gubernatorial campaigns account for approximately $225 million of the spending in the largest hundred markets in the United States.

Candidates spent more than $50 million in the two weeks following Labor Day, according to an ongoing study of political television advertising by Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project and an associate professor in the university’s political science department.

Although Sept. 11 references have been conspicuously absent from ads this year, Wisconsin researchers found that there has been a significant change in the tone of advertising this election cycle.

For the identical time period preceding the 2000 elections, 46 percent of airings were positive, 30 percent were negative, and 23 percent contrasted the candidates’ personalities or policies.

By comparison, in 2002, 70 percent of ads aired to date have been positive, with 20 percent negative and 11 percent contrasting the candidates.

The recent Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin highlights this year’s change in tone. In that race, Democrats who were vying for their party’s nomination did not run a single negative ad.

“Some of the positive glow might be due to the large advertising activity in primaries,” Goldstein says. “As competitive general election contests heat up, things will probably turn more negative. Ads in Wisconsin, for example, that were positive in the primary have turned uniformly negative as the general election contest starts.”

While Goldstein says that voters don’t approve of dirty campaign advertisements, “ads that contrast candidate policy positions are important to the electoral process and actually contain important information,” he explains.

“Dirty ads or ads that are inaccurate are ultimately ineffective. Still, most negative ads contain accurate information and often the best strategy when faced with an effective attack is simply to complain about the tactic,” said Goldstein.