Do Political TV Ads Really Change Voters' Minds?

In hotly contested elections, campaigns flood television channels and streaming services with ads for or against the people running. Learn when they can make a difference in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/do-campaign-tv-ads-change-voters-minds.htm

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum here. The two mid term elections are fast
approaching in the United States, and if you live in
a state with a hotly contested race and watch television,
you're probably being blasted by political TV ads. By late September,

(00:25):
campaigns across the United States had already spent more than
six point four billion dollars on ads, including television, print,
and online, and are expected to spend a total of
nine point seven billion by election day in November, far
more than either the eight or twenty elections. This year's
record spending on TV and other types of political ads

(00:47):
reflects the high stakes of the two mid terms. The
Senate is split fifty fifty and the Dempcrats hold the
House of Representatives by a slim nine seat majority. For
the article this episode is based on, has to Fork
spoke with Christopher Warshaw, a political science professor at George
Washington University. He said campaigns hope that by buying a

(01:08):
few extra thousand ads, they can put their candidates over
the top and win control of the government for their party.
The American public is more polarized than ever before. But
there's still the swath of independent voters in the middle
who are trying to decide, and political ads, despite how
annoying and even stressful they can be, have proven effective,

(01:29):
especially in the tightest races. Even a bombardment of ads
doesn't necessarily turn people off. Warshop and two other researchers
published a study this year in the journal American Political
Science Review examining the effectiveness of political tv ads. They
found that basically the one thousand that is only modestly
less effective than the tenth presidential election was decided by

(01:55):
razor thin margins of victory for Republican candidate Donald Trump
in battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Joe
Biden and the Democrats spent heavily on political tv ads
in those same battleground markets. As election day of approached,
pro Biden tv ads outnumbered pro Trump ads by over

(02:17):
five thousand in key markets like Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and by
over four thousand in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In their research,
Warshaw and his colleagues estimated that for every additional thousand
TV ads a campaign runs compared to its opponent, it
can capture zero point two percentage points more of the vote,
and the results of the presidential election seemed to bear

(02:40):
this out. In sixteen, Trump one Wisconsin by about zero
point seven percent, but in Biden one Wisconsin by zero
point seven percent. The same swing happened in Pennsylvania, in
Trump won by zero point seven percent, but in Biden
won the state by one point two percent. For their study,

(03:02):
Warshop and his co authors analyzed data for more than
two thousand, two hundred and fifty U S elections from
the year two thousand through and not just presidential races.
What they found was the tv ads had a much
greater effect on down ballot races compared with presidential contests,
three times greater effect for senate races, four times greater

(03:23):
for gubernatorial races, and twelve times greater for the more
obscure races like state treasurer. The reason, says Warshop, is
that the whole function of political tv ads is to
convey some sort of new information to the voter. Quote
at the presidential level, ads don't give you much new
information that you didn't already have. We already knew so

(03:43):
much about Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
Whereas the races for the House, or governor or Senate,
people are following those a lot less closely, voters might
not know anything about those candidates beyond their party affiliation.
For that target demographic of undecid I did swing voters.
Any new information provided by a tv AD about a

(04:04):
state or local race could swing them in the campaign's
desired direction. Many studies have been done on the effectiveness
of political tv ads and have shown mixed results. Some
studies determined that these ads have limited persuasive power. Other
studies have shown that it's the nature of the ads
that's the issue, positive versus negative. While Warshaw and colleagues

(04:26):
didn't look at the content of ads in their study,
he did point us to another study that showed all
types of ads a positive, negative, partisan nonpartisan seemed to
have the same small effect on voting outcomes. But in
the game of tv ads, the point is not to
convince a registered Democrat to vote for the Republican candidate.
It's to speak to the independent voters. Warshaw reiterates that

(04:50):
their research showed a very small effect of tv ads
on influencing people to vote for a certain candidate with
the largest plausible effect being one or two percentage point.
So if he was consulting on a campaign on how
to spend its money, he wouldn't automatically recommend pouring millions
of dollars into TV ads. The needle might simply not
sway enough. But as we saw in the last two

(05:14):
presidential races, there are plenty of contests that have been
decided by less than one percentage point a. Warshaw says
that this is also a lesson for political donors who
want the most bang for their buck. A donation to
a presidential campaign is a drop in the bucket, but
that same donation to a down ballot race could buy
more ads that actually influence the outcome. However, it's important

(05:37):
to note that research into past behaviors like Warshaws, was
looking at data from a time when most American voters
watched hours of cable television every day. Their study ended
with data from between one though a quarter of all
cable TV subscribers cut the cord and switched to streaming.

(05:58):
Projections say that fewer than half of all American households
will have cable TV subscriptions by digital ads like the
political ads you might see on Facebook or before a
YouTube video have been found to have an even smaller
effect on voters. But political advertisers are getting smarter now.
On ad supported streaming TV channels like Lifetime or Vice,

(06:21):
campaigns can run hyper targeted ads based on the subscribers
personal data. Because so many Internet platforms now collect and
sell our data, everything from what other things you watched,
read and buy, to demographics like age, gender and race
or ethnicity, to your voting record and the estimated value
of your home could all be influencing what ads your serve.

(06:45):
Just when you thought spooky season was over, You can
run from political ads, but you can't hide. Today's episode
is based on the article do campaign TV ads really
changed voters? Lines on hous to works dot com, written
by Dave Rouse Brainstuff it's production of by Heart Radio
in partnership with houst works dot com and it's produced

(07:07):
by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows