This poll is just for my curiosity, because of that “ban paid political advertising” thread. So - answer Yes if you can say that political advertising (or maybe I should say “paid political advertising”) has caused you to switch your vote in the past or you think will do so in the future. No otherwise.
Only in the sense that I hadn’t heard of the party before (the Australian Sex Party), so no.
Whoever has the most offensive ads will almost certainly not get my vote, so yes it influences me, but not in the way they intend them to.
As much as I don’t care for Romney, and would like to see Obama get re-elected, if he starts in some particularly egregious mudslinging that’s just way too much for me, I’ll vote for Romney (if he’s better).
I just have no respect for politicians and over-the-top attack ads. Of course, it has to be from the “I am ____ and I approve this message” not the PAC ads.
Only on one occasion, and it caused me to switch my vote to the other candidate. It was the only time in my life I’ve voted for a Republican.
This was back when Texas was still a staunchly Democratic state. I was actually in my car driving to my voting place when I heard an ad from the Democratic candidate for some lower-level local office. It was a racist, anti-Black screed, blaming Blacks for a number of problems, and he vowed to do something about it. I could not believe what I was hearing. This was in the 1970s, and I thought even that far back that this sort of thing had died out. I promptly voted for his Republican opponent. I do think he won though, being a Dem.
Yes, I have to admit, I sometimes do. Most often in the case of local offices which are not covered well by the media. Often ads are the only info I have to go on to base my decision on. The newspaper never covers the election for the local school board for example.
No. I don’t watch it, or advertising in general. And at this point the Republicans have become so awful that I simply vote for the Democrat to try to keep the Republican out.
Really? So, the content of ads matters to you more than the positions (and acts) of the politicians you’re voting for?
I actually find this fascinating because I can’t imagine that. Not that I’m liable to see any political ads beyond emails that I mark as spam without reading. But I can’t imagine making a choice for who to vote for president based on being pissed off at a particular ad.
Given what you say here, how confident are you that you are actually able to identify which ads actually came from the campaigns themselves? Because I can’t imagine either Obama or Romney’s campaign coming out with something grossly offensive. They’re both too smart for that. But it wouldn’t shock me if some 501(c) came out with something unacceptable. How sure would you be, after casting your vote on that basis, that you were actually voting based on what a political campaign had done, as opposed to what a third party group had done?
What about non-partisan local races? Those are where I have the hardest choices, because there’s so little information out there.
Extremely confident. I’m a political junkie, I live and breathe the stuff every day, so I am always keenly aware of whether or not an ad came from some pac, or 3rd party group, or was endorsed by the candidates themselves.
One example of this was the Hillary Clinton ad with the 3am phone call or whatever hour it was. It was a scare tactic, it implied things that weren’t true, and it was loathsome to me. I already didn’t care too much for Clinton at the time, but that sealed the deal for me and why I’d support Obama.
If I feel like Obama produces and endorses some ad that is just unforgivable, there’s no way I’m going to vote for him, no matter how much I may support his policies. I can’t reward someone for bad behavior. Sorry, but I can’t.
Once again, I have to ask: Do you also feel this confident about non-partisan local races that aren’t covered by the media? For example, when the local hospital board of directors is up for election, there’s absolutely nothing to base my vote on besides ads.
I usually don’t vote on that kind of stuff. If I do, it’s because I did some research on the candidates running, read their pamphlets they handed out as I was walking in to vote, or something. But I usually just leave those dozens of local things blank.
I count up the number of phone calls I get for each candidate/position and vote for whichever side has the least.
Pretty much this.
I didn’t vote in this poll, because I don’t feel that my position is adequately stated. Usually political advertising won’t persuade me to vote FOR someone. However, there’s been a number of times when pol ads have convinced me that the other candidate is surely a better choice. In many cases, a mudslinging ad is worse than no ad at all, for the candidate who approves it. I figure that if the candidate can’t point to things that s/he’s done, but has to resort to calling the other candidate names, that the first candidate would not do anything really worthwhile in office. Also, if a candidate makes a huge deal out of his/her church and religious ideals…that person is not likely to represent me very well. I don’t to prohibit gays from getting a legal marriage, and I want it to be called a marriage, not a civil union. I’d vastly prefer to keep creationism/intelligent design out of the public classroom. Etc.