I live in a blue district of a blue county in a blue state-- Nassau county, NY. I have see zero campaign ads on TV (except when one is played on the news) and maybe an ad on the radio during drive time. It’s weird. It’s almost as if there isn’t a big presidential election coming up in less than three months.
I do have the vague feeling that people in swing states-- ordinary non-internet dwelling people-- know more about what’s at stake in this election than those of us in NY and IL. How about red states, are they ad-less like us here in NY. And, although I’ve see a few of Herman Cain’s surreal ads, the only one I saw from either presidential campaign was this hilarious, yet stingingly negative, Obama ad on YouTube. Surely the ads are not all that funny. Is this the kind of stuff Romney’s been complaining about? Has Mitt gone negative? Has anyone gone positive?
I’d like to see examples of good and bad ads from both campaigns and if you think they are effective and why. Show me what I’m missing.
Similar here in the Bay Area. No political ads on TV or the radio at all. Actually, there usually are ads for or against propositions at least, but I haven’t seen any yet this year.
The only election ads I’ve seen are yard signs for local politicians – mayors, school board members, and the like. I have to admit there are a LOT of them.
If you’re in a ‘safe’ district, the campaigns aren’t going to spend much money on you.
As I understand it, Romney can’t spend the money raised for a presidential campaign until he was actually nominated for President. Until yesterday he could spend his own money and the money raised for the primary fight, and I think that’s it. All the money raised for the Presidential campaign (about $200 million so far, I think) has been sequestered until today. He was nominated last night, so you’ll probably see a lot of national Romney ads soon. He’s got a huge war chest of cash waiting.
I live in Florida and it’s non stop even showing up on HGTV, Science Channel, History, Comedy, etc. I would tell what they’re saying but I put in on mute. The one’s the most annoying before i can get to the remote is what I call the female concern troll who knows better than you do voice.
Not ads, but I can forward my phone number to you for about a week and you can field all the (ignorant!) push polls, fund raisers, volunteer to help us get out the vote and telemarketers who are hitting Ohio. I don’t even look at my caller ID or answer my phone any more.
Mostly the ad time in my area has been bought out by the Romney camp, so my ads are like loop of their favorite topic of the week. They have bought out so much time that seeing the exact same ad play back-to-back is common. One time, the same ad played four times in a row and I feared that the TV had broken (remember skipping records? – Imagine that your TV only showed the same ad over and over and that ad contained proven lies?)
This does not seem to me to be an effective use of ad time. Sure Romney supposedly has money to burn but running the same ad back to back to back would not endear a candidate to the voters.
Romney hasn’t been accused to having the bestest campaign management team ever. And, it isn’t like the local station is going to put scheduling effort into the issue. (How often does one buyer buy up enough air time to have ads in EVERY POSSIBLE SLOT on the board? Around her, a buyer wants ads to run 10 times over a 24 hr period. So they get plunked in with little thought.)
I can definitely tell when I’ve hit a block of air time not bought out Romeny’s campaign. Then Carl Rove’s ads cycle and they never buy more than one in the possible slots (say a 30 min show has 4 commercial breaks, Rove will only have 4 ads during that show), but Rove has slots almost 24/7 (and it won’t surprise me if they buy out the infomercial time in the future because there is nothing else left.) On the other hand, I think Romney’s campaign tries to push 16 ads into PRIME TIME (so they pay more for them) and the station has no choice but to run them back-to-back-to-back even if Romney has only provided them with one ad.
I’m in Ohio and I’m seeing non-stop ads, too. It does seem as if there are more for Romney than Obama, but there are also plenty of ads for the Senate race. Even though I’m quite partisan, I really truly don’t want to see all these ads. Maybe because I’m quite partisan – I know who I’m going to vote for. Leave me alone!
Also, you’re looking at the fact that these SuperPACs have money to burn off (their donors expect them to spend the money). I don’t think they care about how the ads torture the residents so much as the news paper headline that they spent $X on an ad buy. In HI they had so much money that they started their own channel for a politician ( http://atr.rollcall.com/hawaii-linda-lingle-launches-own-cable-tv-channel/ ) – Now, do you really think that families are going to settle in for a nice night of watching a woman’s senate campaign ads?
You have no idea how fortunate you are. It has been a constant barrage here in NC for months.
And my e-mail inbox is filled with dozens of appeals daily, telling me that unless I pony up, there won’t be enough money to run still more ads to oppose the ads that are currently running.
The only ones I’ve been seeing in Minnesota are the nauseating ones put out by the Koch brothers (ahem!)… Oh, sorry, I mean Americans For Prosperity,
Where the actors pretend they’re really sad voters who are gosh darn disappointed in Obama and gosh darn disappointed in themselves for voting for him:rolleyes:.
I am totally disappointed. I thought with the very few ads I’d seen (the Cain and the one Obama) we here in the solid blue/red states were missing some good stuff. Perhaps after the 5th of September there’ll be an uptick in either the quality or surrealness of the ads. You know, ads that do more than annoy.