Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. The two mid term elections are fast
Speaker 1: approaching in the United States, and if you live in
Speaker 1: a state with a hotly contested race and watch television,
Speaker 1: you're probably being blasted by political TV ads. By late September,
Speaker 1: campaigns across the United States had already spent more than
Speaker 1: six point four billion dollars on ads, including television, print,
Speaker 1: and online, and are expected to spend a total of
Speaker 1: nine point seven billion by election day in November, far
Speaker 1: more than either the eight or twenty elections. This year's
Speaker 1: record spending on TV and other types of political ads
Speaker 1: reflects the high stakes of the two mid terms. The
Speaker 1: Senate is split fifty fifty and the Dempcrats hold the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives by a slim nine seat majority. For
Speaker 1: the article this episode is based on, has to Fork
Speaker 1: spoke with Christopher Warshaw, a political science professor at George
Speaker 1: Washington University. He said campaigns hope that by buying a
Speaker 1: few extra thousand ads, they can put their candidates over
Speaker 1: the top and win control of the government for their party.
Speaker 1: The American public is more polarized than ever before. But
Speaker 1: there's still the swath of independent voters in the middle
Speaker 1: who are trying to decide, and political ads, despite how
Speaker 1: annoying and even stressful they can be, have proven effective,
Speaker 1: especially in the tightest races. Even a bombardment of ads
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily turn people off. Warshop and two other researchers
Speaker 1: published a study this year in the journal American Political
Speaker 1: Science Review examining the effectiveness of political tv ads. They
Speaker 1: found that basically the one thousand that is only modestly
Speaker 1: less effective than the tenth presidential election was decided by
Speaker 1: razor thin margins of victory for Republican candidate Donald Trump
Speaker 1: in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and the Democrats spent heavily on political tv ads
Speaker 1: in those same battleground markets. As election day of approached,
Speaker 1: pro Biden tv ads outnumbered pro Trump ads by over
Speaker 1: five thousand in key markets like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and by
Speaker 1: over four thousand in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In their research,
Speaker 1: Warshaw and his colleagues estimated that for every additional thousand
Speaker 1: TV ads a campaign runs compared to its opponent, it
Speaker 1: can capture zero point two percentage points more of the vote,
Speaker 1: and the results of the presidential election seemed to bear
Speaker 1: this out. In sixteen, Trump one Wisconsin by about zero
Speaker 1: point seven percent, but in Biden one Wisconsin by zero
Speaker 1: point seven percent. The same swing happened in Pennsylvania, in
Speaker 1: Trump won by zero point seven percent, but in Biden
Speaker 1: won the state by one point two percent. For their study,
Speaker 1: Warshop and his co authors analyzed data for more than
Speaker 1: two thousand, two hundred and fifty U S elections from
Speaker 1: the year two thousand through and not just presidential races.
Speaker 1: What they found was the tv ads had a much
Speaker 1: greater effect on down ballot races compared with presidential contests,
Speaker 1: three times greater effect for senate races, four times greater
Speaker 1: for gubernatorial races, and twelve times greater for the more
Speaker 1: obscure races like state treasurer. The reason, says Warshop, is
Speaker 1: that the whole function of political tv ads is to
Speaker 1: convey some sort of new information to the voter. Quote
Speaker 1: at the presidential level, ads don't give you much new
Speaker 1: information that you didn't already have. We already knew so
Speaker 1: much about Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Speaker 1: Whereas the races for the House, or governor or Senate,
Speaker 1: people are following those a lot less closely, voters might
Speaker 1: not know anything about those candidates beyond their party affiliation.
Speaker 1: For that target demographic of undecid I did swing voters.
Speaker 1: Any new information provided by a tv AD about a
Speaker 1: state or local race could swing them in the campaign's
Speaker 1: desired direction. Many studies have been done on the effectiveness
Speaker 1: of political tv ads and have shown mixed results. Some
Speaker 1: studies determined that these ads have limited persuasive power. Other
Speaker 1: studies have shown that it's the nature of the ads
Speaker 1: that's the issue, positive versus negative. While Warshaw and colleagues
Speaker 1: didn't look at the content of ads in their study,
Speaker 1: he did point us to another study that showed all
Speaker 1: types of ads a positive, negative, partisan nonpartisan seemed to
Speaker 1: have the same small effect on voting outcomes. But in
Speaker 1: the game of tv ads, the point is not to
Speaker 1: convince a registered Democrat to vote for the Republican candidate.
Speaker 1: It's to speak to the independent voters. Warshaw reiterates that
Speaker 1: their research showed a very small effect of tv ads
Speaker 1: on influencing people to vote for a certain candidate with
Speaker 1: the largest plausible effect being one or two percentage point.
Speaker 1: So if he was consulting on a campaign on how
Speaker 1: to spend its money, he wouldn't automatically recommend pouring millions
Speaker 1: of dollars into TV ads. The needle might simply not
Speaker 1: sway enough. But as we saw in the last two
Speaker 1: presidential races, there are plenty of contests that have been
Speaker 1: decided by less than one percentage point a. Warshaw says
Speaker 1: that this is also a lesson for political donors who
Speaker 1: want the most bang for their buck. A donation to
Speaker 1: a presidential campaign is a drop in the bucket, but
Speaker 1: that same donation to a down ballot race could buy
Speaker 1: more ads that actually influence the outcome. However, it's important
Speaker 1: to note that research into past behaviors like Warshaws, was
Speaker 1: looking at data from a time when most American voters
Speaker 1: watched hours of cable television every day. Their study ended
Speaker 1: with data from between one though a quarter of all
Speaker 1: cable TV subscribers cut the cord and switched to streaming.
Speaker 1: Projections say that fewer than half of all American households
Speaker 1: will have cable TV subscriptions by digital ads like the
Speaker 1: political ads you might see on Facebook or before a
Speaker 1: YouTube video have been found to have an even smaller
Speaker 1: effect on voters. But political advertisers are getting smarter now.
Speaker 1: On ad supported streaming TV channels like Lifetime or Vice,
Speaker 1: campaigns can run hyper targeted ads based on the subscribers
Speaker 1: personal data. Because so many Internet platforms now collect and
Speaker 1: sell our data, everything from what other things you watched,
Speaker 1: read and buy, to demographics like age, gender and race
Speaker 1: or ethnicity, to your voting record and the estimated value
Speaker 1: of your home could all be influencing what ads your serve.
Speaker 1: Just when you thought spooky season was over, You can
Speaker 1: run from political ads, but you can't hide. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article do campaign TV ads really
Speaker 1: changed voters? Lines on hous to works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Dave Rouse Brainstuff it's production of by Heart Radio
Speaker 1: in partnership with houst works dot com and it's produced
Speaker 1: by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
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