Voters received no break from the presidential marketing campaign in October, new knowledge from promoting intelligence agency AdImpact exhibits. The Trump and Harris campaigns spent a report $529 million on tv promoting in October, which included buying almost all the industrial airtime in essential swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
October’s tidal wave of advert spending additionally exhibits a race the place Republican messaging nonetheless defines public notion—even among the many Democratic insiders behind among the marketing campaign’s handiest messaging. That’s creating surprising complications for Harris in Arizona and Nevada, the place the marketing campaign has spent months courting Hispanic voters as soon as thought of protected Democratic votes.
Nowhere is that clearer than in Republicans’ high subject by complete spending: immigration. Over half of each Republican advert greenback spent in October went to strengthen the Trump marketing campaign’s apocalyptic view of immigration coverage. These adverts additionally explicitly linked immigrants to crime, regardless of nonpartisan analysis displaying that crime charges are literally decrease amongst immigrants than they’re amongst natural-born Individuals. Mixed, immigration and crime adverts made up 95% of all Republican advert spending, AdImpact confirmed.
Elevating fears about immigration has “been their strategy all along,” says Republican political guide and Lincoln Undertaking co-founder Mike Madrid. “The goal is to scare white women into forgetting the Dobbs decision overturning abortion. It doesn’t appear to be working.”
Immigration stays one of many few areas the place most Individuals disagree with the Biden administration, and because of this it’s grow to be an nearly invisible subject amongst Democrats on the marketing campaign path. Harris has prevented immigration because the last presidential debate, and candidates up and down the ticket have likewise prevented the subject completely. Immigration additionally ranked useless final in Democrats’ October advert spending, accounting for lower than 1% of the occasion’s complete spend, as proven by the AdImpact numbers
The place these adverts are showing tells the story of a race that can be determined by small clusters of voters unfold throughout seven swing states. Nowhere has been inundated with extra tv promoting than Pittsburgh, the place the typical TV viewer has seen over 2,300 adverts because the starting of the marketing campaign. In accordance with Bloomberg, political campaigns have bought a lot promoting airtime that “local businesses, the personal injury lawyers, car dealers and furniture stores … often can’t reserve any airtime even if they could afford the inflated rates.”
Pittsburgh holds a particular attraction for each Trump and Harris. The realm has shifted towards Democrats since 2012, and accommodates massive populations of Black and Hispanic voters each campaigns are in search of to realign. It’s additionally part of Pennsylvania that has struggled with each the pandemic and the lack of heavy industrial jobs.
Some Democratic-leaning labor union members there cite immigration as one motive they’re nonetheless cut up between Harris and Trump. In different phrases, Pittsburgh seems to be lots like a scaled-down model of each events’ advert spending.
If that’s the case, it’s dangerous information for Trump, who has seen his edge in Pittsburgh (and Pennsylvania extra broadly) slip away over the previous month. Trump as soon as led Biden by three factors within the Keystone State. The ultimate New York Occasions/Siena ballot of the marketing campaign cycle launched over the weekend now exhibits him tied with Harris. The Muhlenberg School ballot launched final week has Trump dropping the state by 2 factors. a
As an alternative of being moved by immigration and fears of rising crime, as Republicans hoped, Pennsylvania voters are casting their ballots on two of the GOP’s weakest points: abortion and the financial system. Final month, Democrats invested $38 million in adverts highlighting Trump’s menace to reproductive freedom. Against this, Republicans didn’t spend a single dime speaking about abortion, for the excellent motive that the GOP’s place is poisonous to even conservative-aligned voters.
Don’t count on Republicans to see these polls and all of a sudden notice they’re incorrect. “That’s not how it works,” Madrid warns. “If it did they would’ve made adjustments years ago.”
Abortion messaging additionally appears to be working for Democrats deeper within the Midwest. The revered Des Moines Register ballot launched over the weekend shocked the media by giving Harris a 3-point lead in Iowa, a state Trump beforehand led by 18 factors over President Joe Biden. One of many large drivers of that shift was Iowa’s resolution to enact a six-week abortion ban again in July regardless of majorities of Iowan voters opposing a ban.
Democrats spent the summer time and fall blanketing Iowa in tv adverts championing reproductive freedom. That drove down the GOP’s common lead in each single ballot carried out by September, in line with MSNBC polling wizard Steve Kornacki. By the top of September, Trump had fallen from +18 to only +4. A month later, Harris took the lead, bolstered by a large upsurge in assist from ladies. If these numbers are remotely correct, Republicans are in serious trouble on Tuesday.
Trump and his band of media spin masters spent nearly all of their cash on promoting designed to frighten and divide voters.Their adverts are nearly universally unfavorable, with guarantees of carnage, crime, and chaos if Harris and the Democrats maintain the White Home on Nov. 5. They paint a terrifying image of immigrants working rampant in main cities, skyrocketing crime charges, a tanking financial system, and the top of America as we all know it. Thankfully for our republic, most voters don’t appear to be shopping for the doom and gloom on provide from Trump’s nightmare-inducing marketing campaign.
Voters are as a substitute casting their ballots primarily based on the reproductive freedoms they’ve already misplaced—and which they blame Trump and Republicans for by large margins. Democrats’ silence on immigration coverage now looks like a politically shrewd transfer by Harris, although one that also carries excessive dangers in must-win states like Wisconsin.
If the 2024 presidential race finally ends up being outlined by ladies’s outrage over abortion bans as a substitute of fears about Trump’s alleged international invasions, Harris will emerge from the marketing campaign trying like a masterful political operator. She’ll even be president, to the reduction of tens of thousands and thousands of Individuals and pals of democracy world wide.
Because the 2024 marketing campaign enters its last full day, each camps are hoping their deluge of advert spending broke by to the dwindling variety of undecided voters.These voters could have the possibility to render a verdict on whose imaginative and prescient of America they wish to dwell in for the subsequent 4 years. The ramifications of that alternative will echo for generations.
