$90 Million Down The Drain?

[Nicholas_J]

Former Democratic National Committee Chair Larry O'Brien used to say that half the money spent in politics was wasted but the problem was you could never tell which half. Modern campaigns – and especially modern consultants – have an almost mystical belief in the power of TV advertising. The 2004 campaign is seeing unprecedented spending on TV ads and some of the old assumptions are being tested, as Dick Cheney might say, "big time."

Over $90 million has been spent on presidential campaign ads in the past seven weeks – most of it in just 18 of the 50 states – and the horserace is just about where it was when the ads began. The Bush-Cheney campaign has spent $50 million on 35,000 ads, while the Kerry campaign has spent $12 million on 12,000 ads. But other Democratic groups – the Media Fund, MoveOn.org and the AFL-CIO – have thrown another $28 million into the pot.

Both sides have decided to scale back, at least for a week. But they have every intention of coming back over and over again. Since both Kerry and Bush have opted out of the public financing system, neither campaign is constrained by spending limits; the only limits are how much money they can raise and how much time is for sale in the 18 battleground states.

At the end of last week, I spoke to six pollsters and strategists involved on both sides of the ad wars, and a consensus as to what impact – or non-impact – these ads have had has emerged:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/19/opinion/lynch/main612548.shtml


Interesting...They have spent half of the money they have raised attacking Kerry, and it has not only not di,inished Kerry in polls, but Kerry is actually moving ahead in national polls .

[LabMonkey]

1. Bush leads Kerry 51% to 46%

USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll
Bush leads Kerry 51% to 46% among likely voters without Nader.

This is going to be all over the news tonight.

Bush was at his most vulnerable and the Kerry
team has failed to capitalize on it. A soft spot in the Bush campaign like the last few weeks will likely not come again. The VP choice may be critical. He needs someone moderate. Nader will cost him 1-2% as well. Rip me up if you want- If he wants to win, Kerry needs to campaign as President of the United States, NOT President of the Democrats.

Poll: Bush support holds despite Iraq, 9/11 hearings
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Bush's lead over Democrat John Kerry has widened a bit in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll despite two weeks that have been dominated by a deteriorating security situation in Iraq and criticism of his administration's handling of the terrorism threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The survey, taken Friday through Sunday, showed Bush leading Kerry 51% to 46% among likely voters, slightly wider than the 3-point lead he held in early April. The shifts were within the margin of error of +/ 4 percentage points in the sample of likely voters. (Complete poll results)

The president's job approval rating was steady at 52%.

[Nicholas_J]

2. Gallop

Has been at odds with every other pollster this year, including who was going to be the democratic nominee throughout the entire nomination process. So Gallop has not been doing very well so far this year.

Latest Zogby, latest Rasmussen, has Kerry ahead of Bush, as again do most of the polls taken in the last month.

ANd If you follow the weekly tracking, even in the GAllop poll, Kerry is moving forward. Overall, in the tracking of all polls collectively. Kerry still is holdiong a slight lead over Bush. And appears to be keeping it. Spending almost a hundred million with such dismal effects on your opponent is an overwelmingly poor strategy, and the net effect has been for Bush to pull almost all his attack ads on Kerry, particularly the ones attacking Kerry on the economy.

Kerry has a good six months, and Bush has a good six months of press that is getting poorer and poorer.

For an incumbent president, the one factor that is most relevant to his re-election is the presidents approval ratings, and this poll itself is showing another drop in Bush's approval rating.

Kerry's favorability rating is within points of Bush;s but his unfavorabity rating is far lowe than Bush's unfavorability rating.

FInally another aspect of this gallop is bad for Bush, as it indicates that most of the voters indicate that economic conditions will be the main issue on which they will cast their votes, not Iraq or Terrorism. Almost by a two to one margin.

In virtually all other polls, Kerry fares far better in regard to economic strategy.

FActs are that this is a small bump in Bush's favor, but the overall picture in the polls for the last two months show Kerry doing far better than he should be against an incumbent president.

Noted on the BBC and throughouot the capital of the world the news is that Bush's campaign is in serious trouble.

[LabMonkey]

7. New ABC/WP Poll: Bush 48%, Kerry 43%

I hate to say it but your looking for silver linings. People are nervous here and its for a reason. You dont win by fighting less when your poll numbers are good or swarmy and the elections months away to give you comfort. You win by fighting each day like its the the last day you've got and the election were tomorrow.
Presidential approval ratings are comparable to re-elected incumbant presidents at this same point in time. Unless Kerry morphs into something more palatable, he must quit campaigning like its still the primaries.
You do not win national elections with primary tactics. His message must appeal to all. I do not see broad enough appeal to the people who decide elections at this point. There will be no more movement for Kerry unless this is addressed. The red and blue states are not changing. The undecideds know Bush. They are no mysteries to them there. Joe and Jane Sixpack know very little about Kerry at this point- He was in Vietnam, Hes from Mass. Hes rich. He hates Bush.
Kerry is failing to connect with them. IF he were, we would be looking at much better numbers right now. He is still behaving like a liberal senator from Mass. He NEEDS to ACT like a Moderate Progressive President and start acting like a leader and reach out to all, yelling and pointing fingers at voters who disagree with him is not reaching out. He does not have Clintons charm to get away with that kind of thing. Im also tired of the wishy washy answers, trying not to get pinned down or offend potential voters. He needs to start taking some RISKS and LEAD. Sorry but thats the way I see it and I think that that is a valid perspective.

[eumesmo]

8. Agree

I think you're right on both points. I think Bush is slightly ahead. If you translate the red states/blue states it comes out to an effective national lead of about 3% for Bush, which is in line with the polls given the MOE. The Rasmussen polls, and some other polls which show Kerry even or slightly ahead don't include Nader. So I think it's likely that Bush has a slight lead.

On the point about Kerry leading, I agree completely. He needs to have a reason for people to vote for him other than "I'm not Bush." Otherwise he'll be constrained to hoping something bad happens in Iraq or to the economy to win.

[osaMABUSh]

3. F Gallup - let's wait and see the other polls

[leyton]

4. I don't think Kerry has capitalized on Bush's dropping numbers.

He isn't necessarily converting those former Bush voters, and while it's good that Bush is losing votes, it's better if Kerry benefits from it. From the numbers I see, Bush's numbers are dropping but Kerry's really aren't increasing.

Of course, Kerry has steered clear of the 9/11 commission, and probably with good reason. I think once he introduces himself to the population over the summer and then again during the debates, he will have more opportunities to capitalize on Bush's failures.

[Nicholas_J]

5. Kerry is pretty much doing

Exactly what he did during the lead up to the primaries.

Remember that Howard Dean had the nomination sewed up did'nt he?
Once the actual process or running began, Kerry basically slaughtered every person opposing him for the nomination and once he got rolling no one caught up to him anywhere outside of their own home base.

And those are the facts of campaigning for either the nomination or the presidency. You win it at the end, not the beginning. There are a lot of events that appear will go wrong for Bush over the next few months and it appears they will start on June 30th with the handing over of the Iraqi Government from Paul Bremmer to John Negriponte. If you thing the insurgency has been heavy to date. wait. Just as Bush has no exit strategy for Iraq, there is actually no one to turn power over to in Iraq that any of the Iraqi's groups will grant legitimacy to that the Bush Administration will find acceptable. The Iraqi's accept none of the terms by the coalition under Bremmer and so far even the interim government will not accept any of the Bush plans for turning over government. They will only accpet the United Nations plans, which the Bush Admnistration is not very happy with and though Negriponte has some respect in the U.N. he is not very well accepted by the power players on the security council.

come Septemember, this race is going to look a lot more like process to nominate the democratic candidate than it does now. THe Bush Administration has really failed to knock Kerry down by the ten to 15 point that they beleived would be necessary to insure that they would win the election. Right now even with this Gallop Poll, this race is extremely close, and in fact Bush is in the worse position of any incumbent since the end or World War II.

[Nicholas_J]

11. I have only on sentence to speak

Howard Dean, December 2003,who is the Democratic nominee, and who knows the best time to capitalize on an opponents weakesses?

[Nazgul35]

6. They have not spent half their money....

Interesting...They have spent half of the money they have raised attacking Kerry, and it has not only not di,inished Kerry in polls, but Kerry is actually moving ahead in national polls.

the $90 million number is the total combined from the Dems and Reps.....

Kerry and the 527s have spent a combined $40 million while the Bush campaign has spent $50 million....they had $170 million to begin with and Bush is still raising cash at a high clip....

So even using the old estimate of the Bush campiagn, he still has $120 million to spend (far from half)....and he will....

[eumesmo]

9. events trump polls

That events trump polls makes a lot of sense.

I think it's likely that the ads are effective. Otherwise the millions of dollars would be spent in other ways. The problem is there's no way to know how things would have been had they not happened. It's like trying to analyze a baseball game if an umpire had not blown a call. You really don't know what would have happened, becuase the whole game would have been played differently.

You can look at things in two ways. One way is the in spite of all the money spent, things look to be pretty much as they were before all the millions were spent, so the millions were wasted. Or you can say in spite of a very bad month, things are still pretty much as they were, so the millions were well spent.

[spooky3]

13. It was a bad month because the chickens are coming home

to roost for *. The natural consequences of his horrid management are beginning to become apparent, and more and more people will begin to see them. This is quite different from a streak of bad luck, which one can hope that a flurry of advertising will counteract until the bad luck invariably shifts. All of the advertising $ in the world will not convince people that this is a competent president if conditions persist or deteriorate in Iraq, in the weak economy, and other realms.

[dusty64]

10. I hope the extreme

right keeps flushing their blood money down the toilet. Despite the polls, its encouraging that all this money has had VERY little effect holding chimp's poll numbers. Not a very good sign for the rethugs.

[Catt03]

12. They just keep on giving

MSNBC announced that Bush collected 3.5 million dollars at a luncheon today in New York.

In one month, March,he collected 26.2 million from dinners, etc,.

3.5 million at a lunceon? Does this agravate anyone else but me?