IMHO, especially for the intelligent people on this board, political ads don’t really change anyone’s mind when it comes to voting for Bush or Kerry.
Seriously…Dubya and his cronies could spend $100 Trillion dollars in advertising and I wouldn’t vote for him. I am sure there are die-hard Republicans who feel the same regarding Kerry.
So - who are these people who say, “yep. That was a good ad. I’ll change my mind and vote for him now.”
Are there a lot of people who really are so clueless/wish-washy as to be swayed by a lot of jingoistic, flag waving ads?
In other words - who exactly is being “sold” the message on these political ads?
I think a lot of hate ads nowadays are directed at getting out the vote. If you already hate the opponent, a negative ad might make you hate them enough to go out and vote for your guy. I’m not sure if they do a good job of swaying people in the middle to one side or the other.
For me, personally, most political ads these days stretch the truth so blatantly (even obvious without knowing jack about the issues addressed!), that even if the accusations are true, they are nothing in comparison to the tactics used in the ads. This would make me vote for the other guy if 90% of the time s/he wasnt doing the same thing… :rolleyes:
What Ludovic says about getting out the vote makes sense; these ads may be viewed at least in part as motivators rather than persuaders.
But there’s still a huge swing-voter population, as evidenced by the flow of polls over the last few months, where we went from 60-40 Bush-over-Kerry in November (or whenever it was) to 60-40 Kerry-over-Bush now. That’s 20% of the population that seems to me to simply twist in the political winds, depending on whether the day’s news was good or bad for one candidate or another. I honestly don’t understand how somebody can make one choice on Monday and another choice on Wednesday.
But those people are real, and I have to think the television advertising is partly intended to pursue them. It’s something I find both fascinating and frustrating, and I’d really like to understand it better.
I think the only time political ads are useful is in local eletions. I don’t follow local politics as closely as I should. Local news almost never reports on city and county information unless it is related to sports or controversial. At least the ads help with the names of the candidates so I can look at their web sites.
But then, I’m not swayed (or at least I don’t believe that I am) when it comes to ANY advertising.
I mean, if I like Coke instead of Pepsi, just because Britney shakes her thang, does that make me want to chug a Pepsi? I don’t think so. But that’s me.
You HAVE to take these political ads with a grain of salt. They’re almost becoming commericals during the Super Bowl half-time. They’re laughable.
There’s some political commerical going on on tv and radio here in New York presently about how New York State is breaking “Treaties” with Indians. And "How it’s anti-American that New York State would break treaties with Indians.
And, of course, at the end of the commercial, there it is - “Brought to you by the New York State Indian Treaty Preservation”, or some such thing.
What makes ME laugh about that is, recently there’s this spearhead campaign to remove the word “Indian” from local sports teams and the like but, when it comes to some sort of “treaties”, oh, that’s ok to call yourself Indian!!! Much like the NAACP!
I’m usually lumped in that category of “swing voters” that I think politicians try to sway. Typically, a campaign will sway me, but to vote against the guy paying for the ad.
I have been swayed by political ads, but only negatively. I hate negative campaigning and I will not vote for a candidate who indulges it if I can avoid it. I even called a candidate for state senate at home after his ads got particularly obnxious and told him he’d lost my vote! (I really had been planning on voting for him.) I was flabbergasted when he apologized to the public for his negative campaigning a few days later; less so when he went back to using the same tactic within a week. I voted for his opponent.
An ad (either positive or negative) can most certainly turn me off of a politician. Especially if I feel they are trying to be emotionally manipulative. But it’ll never cause me to vote for them that I do on their positions alone.
I wasn’t really swayed, but I was influenced by a local poltical ad campaign recently. A few months back, we had a measure on the ballot to create a Public Utility Division in Portland. It would buy Portland General Electric from an Enron affiliate (or something like that—I’m not too sure of the relationship to Enron, but there was one) and run it as a public utility.
There was a massive TV campaign against it, well before the voter info pamphlets had even gone out, but hardly any ads at all in favor. Obviously, some people with a lot of money had a vested interest in keeping it private. Definite warning sign for me. Generally speaking, if a huge corporation is in favor of something, I’m going to be pretty skeptical about it.
So I was predisposed to vote Yes by all the ads tellng me to vote No. But I still read the info when it came, and did some other reading before deciding for sure that I would vote for it. The measure failed anyway though.
Why is it hard to understand that people may have different information on Wednesday than they had on Monday? Over the past few months the evidence that Bush & Co serioulsy mislead people into supporting the Iraq war has become more concrete. Since the Democrats have started campaigning hard, it seems to have become more acceptable (which is sickening that it wasn’t) to denounce the President without fearing being called unpatriotic.
Every day there is the possibility that we’ll have a bit more information about the candidates than we had the day before. If it is significant enough, it should cause everyone to reevaluate their stance on a particular issue or candidate.
Political ads don’t encourage me to vote one way or another. I usually think that whatever is said in an ad is obviously twisted to make the candidate look good. But they do sometimes bring up issues that I may not have heard about, causing me to do a little more investigation and if I agree or disagree with the stance on that issue strongly enough, I might change my vote.
A one-direction trend is very different from the back-and-forth thing we actually see. I’m not talking about a change from A to B. I’m talking about the vacillation in the middle. Once Bush really gets his PR troops into formation, we’ll see the swing back. The only way to explain it is that the attack ads really do work, and the only reasonable explanation is that the folks in the middle swing back and forth from day to day. Hence, “swing” voters.
I can understand somebody changing their mind over a period of weeks or months, but the fluctuations in the polls indicate that a lot of folks are hugely indecisive on an extremely short-term basis. “Ooo! Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. I think I’ll vote against Bush. Ooo! An ad that says Kerry’s a durn Northeast lib’rul. I think I’ll vote for Bush. Ooo! An ad showing Kerry in uniform. I think I’ll vote for Kerry. Ooo! Schwarzenegger’s on Leno talking about Bush. I think I’ll vote for Bush.” Ad nauseum.
They wouldn’t necessarily make me switch but they do help me solidfy my opinion. For example, after seeing Bush unabashedly using 9/11 and blind patriotism as if it is unique to his campaign and not mentioning a single issue in his ads, I’ve decided to vote for Kerry instead of my preferred third party (Libertarian). This was the opposite of the only Kerry ad I’ve seen so far, the one where he shows a bunch of clips of Bush’s speeches and then flashes statistics and whatnot. An attack ad with actual substance and talking about actual issues, I liked it.
If Kerry did the same thing, I’d probably take another look at the Libertarian candidate. If Bush had offered a good argument in his ad on the accusations presented to him, I’d probably take another look at the Libertarian candidate as well.