Inside Our Wildly Expensive, Dubiously Effective Political Ad Machine

In a given week in July in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for example, Republicans had outspent Democrats by more than 600 gross rating points, a unit that measures the reach of an ad. All of these were bought by the super PACs MAGA Inc., SAG Inc., and Preserve America. The ads they were running, you could see, were working fairly well, improving support for Trump by around 2 percent in randomized-control-trial ad tests. The following week, the Democratic side had cut that difference in Harrisburg to less than 200 GRPs, with significant ad buys by the campaign and Future Forward. At the same time, the Democrats had opened up a whole new front in North Carolina, where for the time being the Republicans had yet to commit a dime. Looking at all this, I had the sensation of being a general taking in reports on the state of the war, where with enough resources, the right messaging, and powerful creative, victory seemed within reach. You have to pinch yourself to remember that under the hood of the system producing such data is a profound contradiction—whereby our parties try to reach small percentages of persuadable voters through ads, using money that welds the same parties to interests wholly unrepresentative of their voters.

A Democratic strategist put it to me this way: If Ritz wanted to roll out a new line of snacks, the company would want a 12-week media campaign, at minimum, to lay the groundwork for a successful launch. Harris was given just a bit more time than that, during what was historically the fiercest part of a race, when about 70 percent of the spending occurs. Given a longer runway, political ads tend to follow a sequence. Early spots introduce the candidate to the public, boost name recognition, and frame the kind of race the candidate would want to run. Later, the ads begin hammering on the campaign’s messaging while drawing contrasts with the opponent and also trying to respond to attacks. In the last weeks, when you’re not likely to win any more voters to your side, the emphasis shifts to driving out the vote. With Harris, the whole race would be squeezed into an election window more like those in Europe, where regulations prevent the protracted ordeals we allow ourselves. Everything would have to happen almost simultaneously. “There’s kind of a walk and chewing gum at the same time” thing, a consultant said.

Trump’s side had started in almost the instant Harris received an endorsement from Biden. That same day, the super PAC MAGA Inc. went live with an ad accusing her of covering up Biden’s “mental decline.” A slew of other ads followed, many of which focused on immigration. The GOP had already calibrated their ad campaign to attack Biden’s handling of the border. When Harris entered the race, they simply rolled over the playbook. She became the “border czar,” shown dancing alongside other Black folk, with a filter on the footage to distort it. Over this, a male voice insinuated that Harris allowed ISIS to establish a beachhead in the United States. Most of the GOP’s best-testing ads followed in the same vein—tendentious, conspiratorial, clear dog whistles. One exception, bearing the title “Meet San Francisco Liberal Kamala Harris,” was basically a super cut of old interview tape of Harris from when she took more liberal positions than she has this year. In one clip, she says she does not believe in treating undocumented people who cross borders as criminals. In another, she insists that putting more police on the street won’t fix crime. At a time when Trump still appeared confused about how he was going to talk about Harris, the people cutting his ads had set a clear tack.