If you’re tired of being neglected because you don’t live in a battleground state, be careful what you wish for.
Unlike Minnesota, Virginia is a top-ranked swing state in the presidential race and has one of the hottest U.S. Senate races in the country.The PBS Newshour put together all of the political ads that ran on a single Richmond, Virginia station during a 30-minute span in the late afternoon. It comes to six minutes of ads (and they’re all negative ads, except one). Here’s the anthology:
hat tip: Taegan Goddard’s Politcal Wire.
I need to thank
my son and daughter-in-law.Given their refusal to move to Colorado, at least they stayed in Minnesota, and didn’t move to Virginia. I have a friend who’s recently taken up residence in Richmond. She’s generally pretty interested in politics, but I think she’ll find that interest wearing thin long before election day.
Gag me. I’d have to turn my tv off completely from now until a week after the election. With luck, the political season here will be somewhat less intense, and also somewhat shorter.
Diminishing returns
It is things like this that make me question whether, above a certain threshold, it really matters who raises the most funds in a political contest. Who can possibly pay attention to an ad blitz this inane, for months and months on end? If Obama airs three commercials per Romney’s two (or vice versa) is that really going to make a difference one way or the other?
I Wonder the Same Thing
That’s especially true when the election is still four months away.
Unfortunately
The answer is yes, it can make a difference.
Remember, the ads don’t have to change 50% of the votes. If they change 2% they can swing the election. It means that a huge amount of money is being spent to buy relatively few votes.
The law of diminishing returns
probably applies to political advertising as it does to other forms of investment.