(CLO) In the final days of the tense presidential campaign, "final" messages sent to voters in 7 swing states (battlegrounds) that will decide the election continue to flood televisions, computers and smartphones.
From Ms. Harris and her supporters, those messages covered a range of everyday issues about the economy and taxes, the fate of legal abortion and the potential dangers of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House.
The final ads from both campaigns will only air for a few days, but they are expected to carry a lot of weight with voters. Photo: New York Times
$2.6 billion spent on election advertising
The US presidential race has seen a whopping $2.6 billion spent on political ads since the start of March, according to a report released Monday by ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris' campaign and groups supporting her have outspent Republican candidate Donald Trump's campaign, $1.6 billion to $993 million.
The bulk — more than $1.8 billion — has been spent in seven battleground states that could decide the election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
This generated more than 380 broadcast ads with a total of nearly 1.5 million airtimes.
For Mr Trump and his allies, there is one dominant message: Defeating Ms Harris is a matter of survival. “How will your family survive another four years if you can’t survive tonight?” an ad from the super PAC Right for America asked.
An analysis by The New York Times and the tracking firm AdImpact of the biggest ad buys in the final weeks of the campaign found clear patterns.
Accordingly, Ms. Harris and her supporters conveyed multiple messages, while Mr. Trump and his supporters largely stuck to variations on the theme of fear.
Harris' campaign tends to play up the candidate's voice and speeches, arguing that she has achieved a level of trust and likability that can win over the few undecided voters.
Advertisements promoting Mr. Trump’s campaign rarely use his voice, instead relying on narrators. And in the final days of the campaign, both candidates will air more sweeping ads calling for patriotism.
Here's a breakdown of the issues and themes that ended the campaign, as viewed by voters in key battlegrounds:
Fear
Ms Harris and her allies have run a relatively modest advertising campaign, using former aides and generals who served under Mr Trump to portray him as “a great danger to America” and “out of control, unstable and unchecked”.
But former President Donald Trump and his supporters sent a different, more horrifying message. In ad after ad, illegal immigrants were portrayed as dangerous.
An ad produced by Make America Great Again Inc. to support Mr. Trump’s campaign uses images from the US-Mexico border to stoke fears about migrants. Photo: New York Times
In an even larger ad campaign, 5,914 airings in just six days in late October for $19.3 million, also paid for by Make America Great Again Inc, said the “innocent victims” of the “border crisis.”
In the Republican Party's biggest ad buy in recent weeks, MAGA Inc. spent nearly $23 million on 8,560 airings of an ad that featured a "little girl" who was "raped and buried alive," but "Kamala allows convicted sex offenders to live near schools and parks."
Taxes and the Economy
Polls consistently show that voters are primarily concerned about the economy and inflation, issues seen as weaknesses for Ms. Harris and that Democrats have tried to address. Future Forward, the main super PAC backing the vice president, has spent the most money, more than $52 million, to air two ads focused largely on kitchen-table issues.
The ad, produced by a PAC supporting Ms. Harris’s campaign, attacks Mr. Trump’s economic proposals. Photo: New York Times
Right for America, a Republican super PAC, is running a positive economic ad in English and Spanish, praising Mr. Trump for his promise to eliminate tip taxes, Social Security and overtime taxes.
“Overtimers are the hardest working people in our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has paid any attention to them,” Mr. Trump said in a rare tone in the ads. At about $7 million, it was the lowest price of any of the biggest late-night deals. Another ad, for about $7.7 million, was for the final weeks of inflation.
Abortion and transgender
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, voters have rewarded Democrats, in midterms and special elections, for defending abortion rights. Harris’s campaign is pushing that advantage. Their second- and third-largest closing ads—$17.5 million and more than 47,600 airings in the last two weeks of October—were about abortion rights.
The biggest broadcast, and aired nearly 32,000 times, was the return of Hadley Duvall, the young woman who helped Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear win re-election last year with her heartbreaking story of being sexually assaulted and pregnant at age 12. This time, Duvall spoke about the “64,000 pregnancies resulting from rape” in states that have banned abortion.
Among the four most-bought ads by Mr Trump’s campaign in October were attacks on Ms Harris’s past stance on transgender rights.
Patriotism, in the final days
The final, overarching ads from both campaigns won't appear in the biggest buys or airtimes because they only air for a few days, but they have two things in common: an appeal to patriotism and a conscious decision not to name the opposing candidate.
Both candidates spoke about patriotism, but avoided mentioning each other by name. Photo: Maryland Today
Harris's two-minute closing remarks, which aired during NFL football games on Sunday, said: "We see in our fellow Americans our neighbors, not our enemies," as a panorama of the country passed by, urban, rural, black and white.
Mr. Trump’s minute-long ad begins in a male voice—not his own. “When we are knocked down, we do not lie down, we rise again,” the narrator admonishes, using Mr. Trump’s own words from that July day in Butler, Pennsylvania. “We fight, we fight, we fight.”
Nguyen Khanh (according to New York Times)
Source: https://www.congluan.vn/bau-cua-my-nhung-thong-diep-cuoi-cung-va-chien-dich-quang-cao-ty-do-cua-hai-ung-vien-post319956.html
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