O’Rourke campaign largest digital spender by far; At least $4 million on digital ad spending in tight Senate races (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 13, 2018 - Though campaigns still spend the majority of their ad dollars on television advertising, digital advertising has become an increasingly important component of campaigns’ ad strategies. The Wesleyan Media Project’s latest analysis compares television ad spending with digital ad spending in 14 of the most competitive U.S. Senate races, finding at least $4 million in spending on digital advertising since the end of May. Table 1 shows estimated spending by the Democratic and Republican nominee in…

Photo Gage Skidmore/Flickr Women candidates more positive; Democratic women laser focused on health (MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 13, 2018 - Pro-Trump messaging in political ads continued through August. Almost 36,000 ad airings in U.S. House and U.S. Senate races mentioned Donald Trump in a positive fashion between August 1 and September 3, which is 13.4 percent of all ad airings in those races. By contrast, 4.8 percent of ads mention Trump in a negative light (Table 1). As Figure 1 shows, this embrace of Trump is unlike past midterms. Trump has seen a greater percentage of positive mentions than any other…

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) September 6, 2018 - The Wesleyan Media Project is releasing its second post in a series of regularly updated overviews of issue mentions in federal races by state. Below we show the number of ads that aired in House and Senate races in each state from August 1, 2018, to August 31, 2018. Read our other Issue Spotlights: Issue Spotlight (1/1/2017 - 7/31/2018) Issue Spotlight (9/1/2018 - 9/30/2018) We break down the percentage of ads mentioning six key issues tracked by the WMP. For example, over 16,000 ads aired in federal races in Arizona last month. A majority…

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) August 29, 2018 - The Wesleyan Media Project is releasing the first post in a series of regularly updated overviews of issue mentions in federal races by state. Below we show the number of ads that aired in House and Senate races from January 1, 2017 to July 31, 2018. We break down the percentage of ads mentioning six key issues tracked by the WMP. For example, from January 1, 2017 through the end of July, 19,926 ads have aired in federal races in Arizona. An overwhelming majority (59 percent) of those ads mentioned the issue of healthcare,…