There are a few ads coming out now from the Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman camps going after the flip-flopping of Gingrich and Romney respectively. They appear fairly powerful to me, though I’m not a potential Republican primary voter.
Do ads like this work? Do ads work at all? Only positive ones? Only negative ones? Is it intuitive which ones will work, or counter-intuitive? Can they backfire?
Open discussion about political ads.
The ad Lyndon Johnson ran about Goldwater, with the little flower girl getting nuked. Back when LBJ was the peace candidate.
Rick Perry’s latest might have worked better (in the sense of being a less epic fail) if he’d had the sense to turn off the like/dislike function on YouTube…
(as I write: it’s 1980 “Likes” to 82927 “Dislikes” :p)
In the same vein the Willie Horton one although that was more accurate.
I think negative ads work well for candidates that the public doesn’t already have a well established view of. Running ads against Mitt or Huntsman is probably worth it. For a lot of people an ad would probably be the first they’ve heard of Huntsman, and while most people are probably vaguely aware of Mitt, I don’t think many people outside of Mass. have a particularly strong opinion about him either way. Ads are good at leading peoples thinking about topics they’re not already heavily invested in.
I’m not sure doing so against Obama or Newt is as effective. Pretty much everyone in the country already has their own view of Obama, and everyone over 30 probably has the same for Newt.
You do realize that the furlough program was started under an earlier Republican administration with bipartisan support? And it was the MA Supreme Court that ruled that first-degree murderers could not be excluded from the program? Or does “accurate” in your mind mean the same thing as “ooh, black people are SCARY!”?
I was on a long term focus group leading up to the 2007 Federal Election in Australia. Although the people running the sessions wouldn’t reveal who was paying them I had the impression it was the Labor Party.
The two main things I learned from going to these focus groups were:
Most people shouldn’t be allowed to vote at all. They simply spout idiotic slogans to justify their decisions, without any regard to what is really happening. I hate both parties devoutly and would point out to other participants how their beliefs conflicted with reality.
But it would make no difference because when it comes to politics one ounce of emotion is heavier than 1 ton of facts.
One of the election ad techniques I hate with a passion are robo-calls, when you get a telephone call from a machine. Do these things persuade anybody, or are they just a waste of money? I think they’re a waste of money. Here in Ohio during last month’s election we were inundated with calls with the taped voices of celebrities urging us to vote one way or the other on controversial issue 2. The pro-issue 2 Republican side even went so far as to have ancient crooner Pat Boone weigh in on the issue. My God, who would base their vote on what a taped phone call from Pat Boone said?
I remember Dukakis in a tank. That was pretty memorable.
Kerry windsurfing.
Personally, when I get a robocall from anyone, I hang up before I’ve even heard what it is they’re selling. Then again, though, robocalls are also really cheap, so they might be cost-effective even with a very small proportion of people who listen to them.
Well, this one was effective in getting a GOP campaign manager sent to jail: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/ex-ehrlich-campaign-manager-schurick-convicted-in-robocall-case/2011/12/06/gIQA6rNsaO_story.html
And folks wonder why Democrats accuse the GOP of trying to dissuade black voters.
Governor Dukakis vetoed a bill that would have excluded first degree murderers after the Court made that decision. He did abolish it in the end in 1988 thought but only after an intensive newspaper campaign.
Well, speaking of memorable, the latest Ron Paul one might stick around. Is it a campaign ad or a truck ad?
Mike Gravel goes spelunking*. Insane but definitely memorable.
I love this campaign ad. Refreshingly honest.
I wonder if he’d consider moving to the US and applying for the Republican nomination. 
