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Wesleyan Media Project

Candidate Desantis speaking at press conference
Heavy Spending by GOP in Iowa, including Trump 2024 ElectionsReleases

Heavy Spending by GOP in Iowa, including Trump

Photo Gage Skidmore/flickr GOP candidates get significant backing from super PACs(MIDDLETOWN, CT) January 11, 2024 – Donald Trump may not be at the Republican presidential debates, but he is not conceding the airwaves in Iowa or New Hampshire, a new analysis from the Wesleyan Media Project shows. Trump’s campaign, along with the Make America Great Again super PAC, have spent about $10 million on the airwaves in Iowa (Table 1) for roughly 22,000 ad airings, just shy of the number of pro-Haley airings. Another 4,800 airings (or about $4.7 million) in pro-Trump ads have aired in New Hampshire, but the…
Wesleyan Media Project
January 11, 2024
Graphic of TV static
Political Advertising in Presidential Elections: Assessing the Battleground Blog

Political Advertising in Presidential Elections: Assessing the Battleground

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) October 25, 2023 - The Presidential election in 2024 is nearly one year away, and it is useful to speculate on how many television ads we might see in the coming campaign. Are digital ads squeezing out the appetite for television ads? Is the battleground more narrow today than in prior years, perhaps shrinking as the country has polarized politically? As we reported in our book, Political Advertising in the United States, political advertising volumes on television ebbed in 2016 but surged in 2020. The latter election featured fewer TV ads because Trump was more engaged online (and…
Wesleyan Media Project
October 25, 2023
Microphones and American flag
New Studies Published on Television and Digital Advertising in the 2022 Midterms 2022 ElectionsBlogReleasesYear-End Summaries

New Studies Published on Television and Digital Advertising in the 2022 Midterms

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) February 22, 2023 – New research published by the Wesleyan Media Project provides two summaries of political advertising activity in the 2022 midterms. The two pieces appear in the latest issue of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics and are both freely available through open access. The first examines advertising trends on television across all sponsors (open access link) while the second hones in on digital activity on Meta (including Facebook and Instagram) and Google (including YouTube, display and search) by federal candidates (open access link).   Key takeaways from the publications are as…
Wesleyan Media Project
February 22, 2023
WMP Issue Spotlight
Advertising Issue Spotlight (9/5/22 – 11/08/22) 2022 ElectionsReleases

Advertising Issue Spotlight (9/5/22 – 11/08/22)

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) February 21, 2023 – The Wesleyan Media Project is releasing the final post in a series of regularly updated overviews of issue mentions in federal races by state. Below we show the percentage of ads mentioning seven key issues tracked by the WMP (abortion, energy/environment, guns, health care, immigration, inflation, public safety). Individual graphs by state can be seen by clicking on any state. The post covers ads from all sponsors (candidates, parties, and outside groups) aired on broadcast TV in U.S. House and U.S. Senate races from September 5, 2022 to November 8, 2022. Note that percentages…
Wesleyan Media Project
February 21, 2023