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Wesleyan Media Project

2020 ElectionsReleases

Trump Shifts Focus From Crime to Jobs

Photo: Thru_the_Glass/Flickr Jobs, Business, Taxes Top Trump Issues in TV Ads; Biden Focuses on Virus   (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 17, 2020 – A new analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project finds that, at least on television, Donald Trump’s advertising has shifted away from his almost exclusive focus on crime and protests (as highlighted in our August 12 report) to more “bread and butter” Republican issues. Over the past five weeks, Trump’s ads have focused on jobs, business and taxes, with each issue appearing in over half of his ads (Table 1). Immigration has also been highlighted by the Trump campaign,…
Wesleyan Media Project
September 17, 2020
2020 ElectionsReleases

TV Ads Favor Biden 2:1 in Last Month

Photo: Becker1999/Flickr Record Breaking Volume of US House and US Senate Airings   (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 9, 2020 – A new analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project, in partnership with the Center for Responsive Politics, shows that pro-Biden television ads have dominated the presidential race in the past month. Since August 10, Joe Biden and his group supporters have aired 106,000 television ads at a cost of $58.9 million compared to 57,000 ads at a cost of $35.8 million for Trump and his group supporters (Table 1). Biden’s campaign has put up 92,000 ad airings (at a cost of almost…
Wesleyan Media Project
September 9, 2020
Blog

Calculating Reported Spending on Facebook Advertising

Photo: WOCinTech Chat/Flickr (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 1, 2020 – With Facebook online ads making up a large part of political advertising, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) strives to use the Facebook data in its reporting on campaign spending. To do this, WMP uses the Facebook spending reports that are posted on the Facebook Ad Library website. Between arriving as a download and appearing as a tidbit of information on a website, a report undergoes several transformations, depending on the final use of the information. Some of them involve cleaning up data, others involve classification into political entities. An entity is…
Wesleyan Media Project
September 1, 2020
2020 ElectionsReleases

Ad Volumes in Congressional Races Smash Records

Photo: John Brighenti/Flickr Senate Ads Up 170 Percent; House Ads Up 104 Percent   (MIDDLETOWN, CT) August 13, 2020 – The year 2020 is shaping up to be a banner year for television advertising with huge increases in volume and (to a lesser extent) spending in U.S. House and U.S. Senate races. Since January 1, 2019, over 275,000 ads have aired in markets across the country for U.S. House races, which represents a 104 percent increase over the comparable period in the 2015-2016 election cycle and a 73 percent increase over the 2011-2012 cycle (Table 1). Spending on House advertising…
Wesleyan Media Project
August 13, 2020