It takes more than numbers to win a war, and the same goes for the crucible of American politics.
During the final presidential debate, the eventual winner and incumbent President Barack Obama likened Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s beefy war plans to a stockpile of horses and bayonets. As much as Americans appreciate the time both candidates spent with their respective quip coaches, a more fitting analogy could not be found to foreshadow the edge Obama’s campaign held over Romney in the advertising war.
It takes more than billionaires and bulk advertising purchases to win an election, and a finer look at the advertising campaigns attests to this fact.
As numbers are crunched and the voter turnout analyzed, analysts are coming forward with various theories as to how Obama garnered such a convincing victory, but few have the advantage of having worked for both campaigns simultaneously, as media analyst Ken Goldstein does.
“We’re providing the same data, the same kind of reports for both campaigns,” Goldstein said during his visit to the University last week.
Goldstein is the president of Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which worked for both the Obama and Romney campaigns for advertising consultancy during the last election. “We’re unique in political consulting because we’re nonpartisan.”
In essentially helping both campaigns keep tabs on the other’s advertising, Goldstein noticed the intricacies of how each candidate purchased and distributed his ad campaign. The biggest difference, he said, was the difficulty posed by political groups, such as super PACs, and wealthy donors.
And this is where sheer numbers did little for Romney’s old-fashioned campaign strategy: He bolstered his campaign with horses and bayonets, forgetting he was up against the president’s drones.
The big-name donors and immense super PAC support not only affected the purchasing dynamic of the ad war, but also the tone of the ads themselves.
When it comes to purchasing ad spots in markets across the country, Goldstein said television stations guarantee the lowest going rates to the candidates themselves, while ads bought by super PACs or donors cost more.
“Obama got more ads for the buck,” he said, because “more Republican money was from groups,” but after constantly monitoring every ad produced by each campaign over the course of election season, Goldstein also noticed how groups negatively affected both the quality and content of the ads themselves.
During the Republican primary, Goldstein boldly called the Florida primary “the most negative campaign ever,” and this changed little when Romney made it to the big leagues.
“Groups tend to go more negative because it’s easier,” he said, adding that it also makes donors happier.
Criticizing the effects of money in politics finally made it mainstream during the multibillion-dollar presidential campaign, from the little-heard former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer to Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, and after the troll of trolls Donald Trump decided to throw his own wild card into the election by blackmailing the president with a charity donation, the entire nation could see how potent a tool a few million dollars can be in the political ring.
But Goldstein’s analysis shows the effects reach much further than what’s seen in the headlines. As Americans — and young people, especially — continue to complain about just how negative politics has become, they can rest assured this is the case because it makes the candidates’ wealthier supporters sleep more soundly at night and feel like they showed someone who’s boss.
As Goldstein put it, Obama ran a “21st Century campaign.” Romney, on the other hand, was looking too closely at his numbers and too sparingly at the logistics and strategy of the game.
