I have a feeling that, at some point, at least one of the two major parties is going to feel that Clinton’s election is a lock, and they need to concentrate on control of Congress. Who do you think blinks first, and how close to election day does it happen?
For example, the week before the election, the Clinton ads might change to, “You can elect Hillary, but unless you vote to get Democrats control of both the House and Senate, all of her promises for a better future for you will end up stuck in Republican gridlock in Congress.”
Nothing new about a last-minute change in course; IIRC, the Michael Dukakis campaign in 1988 switched to “A vote for Bush is a vote for the possibility that Dan Quayle can become President” in the final days.
I had assumed that Clinton’s actual campaign ads had to be for the presidency whereas the DNC and PACs could run ads for whoever but I could be wrong.
Clinton is already pulling ads out of states like Colorado and Virginia where she has a substantial lead in the polls but that’s to concentrate on more competitive states, not to turn her funding towards down ballot races.
They will pull their ads when they can’t afford to run them anymore. For one side that might be when the donors say, “We have the presidential race locked up. Now let’s put some money toward the 4th District congressional race.”
The other side could say, “It’s hopeless. Let’s focus our efforts down ballot.”
Of course if you put the question directly to Hillary or Donald, they’d reply “Never!”
Not necessarily. If one of the candidates decides they have a substantial enough lead, they might decide to stop running ads so they can save the remaining money for their re-election campaign in 2020.
It may be more likely that the ad content will change. Try to push some support to downballot Democrats.
Like ads on Chicago TV will start to show Hillary with Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic candidate who is challenging Republican Senator Kirk. It will still be a Hillary ad, paid for by her campaign, but just having Tammy’s face in the ad might help her. And that might give President Hillary one more Democratic vote in the Senate.
Worst possible thing that could happen is that the Dems get over confident. An October surprise could still happen that gives Trump a big boost. I’d rather them keep spending to defeat Trump even if polls shot him at 1% support. Trump needs to be smashed into oblivion and go down as the HUUUUUG–YEST loser in political history.
related: I was listening to feature on NPR today. They mentioned that TV ads typically have some effect for a few days, period. According to the interviewee, the only time that might work is immediately before the election.
It was suggested that the reason so many ad buys are made is because of the percentage of the ad price that goes to the consultants. Huh.
I can’t see the Clinton campaign completely pulling ads, but they could reduce (or shift) the number of states they run in. For instance, they recently stopped ads in Virginia and Colorado.
Trump? Who knows. He’s too busy holding rallies in places like Connecticut, Maine, and Oregon to care much about ads.
Not that simple, the more times you see the same ad the more effective it is (to a point, after a certain amount of repetition the effectiveness goes down). Ad agencies spend millions studying this stuff and I would bet they try to plan it so the average viewer will get the right out of viewings and not many more. Also they continually change the messages every so often and the cumulative effect of different ads for Clinton does add up.
I’ve seen a few Clinton ads here in WA, which is a lock for her. They’re all ads attacking Trump, so I assume the purpose is to win over Sanders supporters (we caucused for Sanders nearly 3-to-1) by reminding them that Trump is much much worse.