This reading dealt with the fact that the major
decision makers for people when voting (especially for Senators) are the
television spots. The article discussed
how today's campaigns are now candidate-centered rather than political
party-centered and how they require large sums of money in order to pay for all
the advertising, and a team of professional workers rather than a team of
volunteers is a necessity.
Much of the
money goes to commercial advertisements, but another large portion goes to
continuous polling and direct mail strategies.
The article talked about the need to have the
speed and technology to know how the people feel right away. A candidate cannot wait weeks or even days
for the results to come back to him or her whether he or she is in the
lead. The results are needed within
hours. After getting the results from
the polls, it is then time to determine what action needs to be taken to aid
your campaign (or more often hurt your opponent). The candidate then needs to create new
television ads to make himself or herself appeal to the interests of the people
or sometimes to counteract the bad things the opponent has to say. This fight between the television ads is
often referred to as Spot Wars.
While the Spot Wars help out the candidates (or
harm the opponents with derogatory remarks), they can cost an enormous amount
of money; and after being played on television the opponent will return the
attack with one of his or her ads-then, the candidate will have to go back to
work all over again creating new ads regarding the new polls-all of which costs
more money. A major portion of the money
for candidates to use comes from PACs.
These PACs make up 1/4 off all contributions to Senate campaigns, while
some of the other money comes from fund raisers and cost-per-plate dinners.
Before the candidate begins to play the ads on
television he/she needs to determine what the campaign focus is going to
be. Focus groups are small groups of voters
who gather with the candidate to give an idea of perhaps what the people are
looking for. Then the candidate has to
decide when to run the ads. Determining
that can be more difficult: if you have
the money it is probably best to start early and hope your opponent runs out of
money trying to counteract your ads-"One candidate puts on a message, and
the other has to decide how to respond."
After you run the ads you have to poll the people, of course, to
determine how they feel about your standings on issues. If they don't like them, then you have to
change your ads; and if your opponent is winning, you might as well say
something about him/her to make him/her look bad to the viewers-"negative
ads always cause a critical reaction at first, but are effective in the long
run." In just a matter of seconds
on a commercial, you can tarnish the life-long reputation of your opponent if
you so desire; and the opponent will have to run new ads to bring his/her reputation
back into good standing and then possibly tarnish yours. Many times, however, a candidate will
overreact when a negative ad is thrown against him/her. "They tend to believe the voters will
turn against them." A negative ad
does throw the candidate off-guard and causes him/her to respond and take up
precious time and resources.
I thought that this article was fairly
interesting in that the candidates are able to respond so quickly to the
television ads and have new ones made at the drop of a dime. The article made me realize how much "bashing"
goes on between the opponents-they are always saying bad things about each
other. The amount of money that it takes
to run the ads was talked about briefly, and it seems hard to fathom that the
candidates can come up with the money so easily.
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