Republican dark money will almost certainly fill the hole of direct spending by Trump’s campaign in the other swing states. Issue-focused and industry PACs will dump a ton of advertising into these states that will be to the benefit of Republican candidates (obviously including Trump). It’s not ideal – these entities pay higher rates for advertising that the campaign committee and Trump’s campaign is not allowed to coordinate with them (ha!) – but the actual discrepancy in funds spent to support the candidates will be much less than what’s depicted.
I don’t dispute that. Focusing their resources in the way they are might be the best move they could make.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, because I honestly don’t know, but do you have a cite for that? It’s kind of a big claim to say that the Republicans are secretly matching the Democrats’ spending when there is such a disparity.
Trump campaign is spending 3.8% in NC compared to PA.
Same figure for Harris campaign is 26%
I shouldn’t say (and hope I didn’t imply) that Republicans are “secretly matching” Democrat’s advertising spending in the identified swing states. I don’t know what the chart @bordelond posted represents – is it just ad reservations booked by Trump’s Presidential campaign committee, does it include reservations made by Trump’s leadership PAC, reservations made by various superPACs directed by Trump and his allies, etc. And of course, Democrats have their own dark money and superPACs that will be directing money toward swing states.
But I do not take the paltry sums represented here for Nevada, Wisconsin, North Carolina, etc. as evidence that Trump and Republicans are abandoning these states and going “all in” on PA and GA. It’s certainly not an accurate representation of how much will actually be spent in these states on advertising by allies supporting Trump’s election. Trump was already leaning on dark money groups to close his campaign funding deficit versus Biden earlier this year, and these groups representing interests who would benefit from another Trump term will spend plenty of money to give him the best shot at the White House.
Not Florida.
When independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was included as an option, Harris cut Trump’s lead to just 2 points. The poll did not include a margin of error but stated that similar polls typically have margins of error of 3 percent…McLauchlan suggested that a Harris win is possible due to a “surge in support for Harris in the Latino community,” ballot initiatives on abortion rights and recreational marijuana and enthusiasm that could result in increased Democratic turnout among women and younger voters.
“The support for Harris Walz looks very much like the Obama coalition that won Florida in 2008 and 2012,” McLauchlan said. "With Harris at the top of the ticket—and the new enthusiasm of Democratic base voters, women, Latino voters, youth voters—and the ballot initiatives that should drive turnout—it actually seems possible that Florida could turn blue.
And then there is Georgia- where harris is ahead- but only by a bit. She is head by a bit more in Penn.
I dunno, that would be to their benefit. Not having to coordinate with Donald they can put forth a campaign message that makes some sense.
But yeah, lower direct spending is not the same as abandoning, and darkpac funding can be enough if the state is perceived as close and winnable w/o extraordinary effort. So the campaign focuses on “anchors” that it feels the candidate must not lose while the other battlegrounds are in play.
I understand it to be sum of ad buys regardless of payor.
Poking around at the Ad Impact link you helpfully provided, it looks like these numbers for Trump represent ad reservations made by his presidential campaign committee and MAGA Inc., his primary SuperPAC. Those are the two biggest vehicles for campaign spending that he most directly “controls” (the SuperPAC can’t coordinate with the campaign but it’s run and staffed by Trump loyalists so ha, ha, ha, ha, ha). So, these numbers probably don’t account for other Republican-affiliated SuperPACs as well as all the dark money spending that will be done to support Trump and/or attack Harris in these states. I don’t know if it’s even possible to comprehensively gather that data.
Is tied in one, PA. Not shaky on the rest.
You will be shocked to learn the Trump campaign has decided to go negative.
Excerpt:
Mr Trump initially appeared off when grappling with his new opponent, but as the campaign reaches its final phase, his advisers and allies have established a clear strategy. They are betting heavily on attack ads that paint Ms Harris as an out-of-touch leftist who is soft on crime and immigration. One goal is to persuade voters that Ms Harris—who wants the election to be a referendum on her rival—should be held accountable as the number two official in a “weak and pathetic administration”.
The approach may be working: Mr Biden’s winning coalition from 2020 had fallen apart during his reelection bid, and Ms Harris has only partially rebuilt it, despite the progress she has made in the polls in a short time. Her support among those under 30 has fallen 12 points below what Mr Biden earned in 2020, according to Wall Street Journal polling. She lags ten points with black voters and Hispanic support has dropped 6 points. These gaps could be decisive given that Mr Biden won the presidency four years ago by a margin of just 44,000 votes in three swing states.
Currently 53% of Americans view Mr Trump unfavourably, according to FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit. This mattered less when Mr Trump was running against Mr Biden, who voters disliked even more. But Ms Harris now earns favourable ratings from 46% of Americans, almost the same share who view her unfavourably. With Mr Trump’s numbers seemingly immovable it will be hard for him to win unless he brings down Ms Harris, as he did in his successful contest against Hillary Clinton.
Limited Giftlink (The Economist):
The movie The Apprentice is coming to theaters October 11th. The movie is about Trump, but it is not flattering. It depicts his early career, and the title is a reference to his “apprenticeship” under Roy Cohn, a lawyer notorious for being crooked.
I don’t know if it will influence voters, but it will hopefully at least create buzz about his unsavory past.
It’s not clear to me how widespread it will be seen (it’s being distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment), but they did just beat a $100,000 goal to increase distribution.
Here’s a clip. In it, Trump is talking on the phone while Cohn is encouraging him to be more bombastic. Given the current Trump we all know and loathe, it would seem a seminal moment.
I heard one MAGA NewsRadio personality sound defeated. Basically said, “I wish I didn’t have to vote for Trump but he’s the Republican candidate so I’ve gotta.” She was definitely against him running in 2028 if he loses.
Until he runs.
If you say so.
I was in Nevada for a week. There were a lot of political ads. Some hopeful ones for Harris, and nasty ones attacking Harris.
I didn’t see any ads either praising or attacking Trump.
It’s starting to look like Harris got her convention bounce when Biden first stepped down and her numbers are in a slight decline.
I simply don’t believe the WSJ about Veep doing 12 points worse than Biden with young voters. She’ll win that demographic by the same 25-30 point margin that he did.
Well, not the Palestine-or-bust young fools,* who are threatening to make a similar mistake as the Bernie-or-bust* young fools in 2016.
*I support the policy positions of both sets of young fools — but at the cost of failing to vote against Trump? No way.
(Quoting the Economist, not @Dr_Paprika)
I saw one of these over the weekend, about a woman who was purportedly attacked by an illegal immigrant released from jail by DA Harris. I’m sure it was 97% bullshit, but likely effective with low-information types.
It also depicts Donald raping Ivana, a claim she made then rescinded during their divorce proceedings.
Nor should you, believe almost any individual poll’s subgroup numbers. For subgroups we need to aggregate several polls together to get anything believable. YouGov regularly releases decent n polls, but subgroups get noisy. For the 18 to 29 group they jerk around from H+29 on the most recent to H+19 the immediate previous but same general range as Biden is believable. Maybe though she will bring a bigger age group turnout on the day?
This movie came up in one the NFL threads, because Dan Snyder, the former owner of the Washington NFL team, owns one of the production companies involved.
He sued, because, rather naively and stupidly, he thought it would be some sort of hagiography that would boost Trump’s election chances and wanted it re-cut to be that sort of movie. That didn’t work. And it was announced a couple days ago that he (or his company) manged to sell their stakes in the film.
So Dan Snyder, at least, thinks the film will not help Trump’s election chances. Given what we know about his judgment and acumen, I’m not sure that should be comforting.