The winner of the American election will be media.
Advertising spend by parties and individual political candidates is estimated to be about $14 billion.
In figures compiled by America’s Center for Responsive Politics, ad spend is 50% higher than the 2016 presidential election period. About half the amount spent was on campaigns for president, while the other half was ads for congressional candidates (Reps and Senate). Democrats spent more than Republicans in ad campaigns.
Despite Covid making direct fundraising activities difficult, there was in increase in donors to political campaigns overall in the year leading up to yesterday’s US election, according to analytical website OpenSecrets.
Over $500 million was spent on radio campaigns, but much more was spent on tv and social media.
President Trump’s television campaign spend totalled over $40 million, airing about 59,000 TV ads.
The Biden campaign spent over $100 million on Facebook/Google, while Trump spent $135 million, according to Media Post.
An earlier estimate from Kantar CMAG predicted that tv would receive $3.5 billion; with digital media at $1.8 billion, cable TV at $1.2 billion and radio at $500 million.
Most of the political ad spend was concentrated in six key states, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Arizona, which received 90% of tv and radio ad spending targeted especially at people spending more time in their homes due to the pandemic, according to NPR.
A study by the Wesleyan Media Project, which began tracking broadcast advertising in federal elections ten years ago, and added digital ads two years ago compared how candidates advertised on TV versus Facebook in the 2018 midterms.
The study’s author, Erika Franklin Fowler told PBS NewsHour that mainstream media ads try to persuade, while social media campaigns aim to raise funds or to get people to sign up to mailing lists so they can receive direct continuous messaging.
“Television ads are there to persuade. Digital ads have a wide variety of different goals, you’ll have ads that are seeking to get citizens to sign up for their mailing list so that they stay informed. You’ll also have ads that are about donating to a particular race.
“I think digital ads in a lot of ways drive fundraising and can drive more money to spend everywhere, which can include more money on television… they feed each other.”
The closeness of the race and the extra time needed to count mail votes means that the result of the US election may not be known for some time, and the result, when it is known, may be challenged in court.
100 million mail votes, which will not be processed quickly.
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