Governors are winning the TV ad race
Everybody’s focused on the races for Senate seats in the November election. But it turns out more money is being spent on TV ads in gubernatorial races. All you have to do is look at the numbers.
“As of the 9th of October, to date we have about $426 million spent on gubernatorial campaign ads,” says Michael Franz, a professor of government at Bowdoin College and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which also tracks spending on TV ads for Senate campaigns this election. Franz says about $337 million has been spent on Senate races — $90 million less than the spending on gubernatorial races.
Why? Franz says the tightest Senate contests are in relatively cheap media markets, like Iowa. But money is also pouring into the governors’ races because of the gridlock in Washington.
“People think governors can get something done,” says Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University. “They have no hope that anything is going to get done in the congress, which has approval ratings lower than Attila the Hun.”
The result? Almost 22,000 TV ads in a recent two-week period, in just the gubernatorial race in Florida.
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