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I'm Henry Olson, and welcome back to The Horse Race. Both parties have held their conventions, and we'll find out whether they mattered from the Cook Political Report's Amy Walter. We'll also have a super-duper extended edition of Ad of the Week. We'll have seven different ads, and we're going to learn how competing ads in difficult districts interact with each other.
so that we can see not just an ad in isolation, but how ads and ad makers try and attract your attention and set up an argument when you're trying to weigh competing claims. The horses are at the starting gate. They're off.
Well, the conventions are over and the horse race is back. And joining me this week to talk about the conventions and all things about American politics is, in a nod to the release of the third Bill and Ted movie, the most excellent Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report and host of Politics with Amy Walter, which is broadcast on WNYC and can be heard nationally on over 250 stations on NPR. Amy, welcome back to the horse race.
Well, I'm very glad to be here. Thanks a lot. Well, we've had two conventions of an unusual and remote style. Let's call them the Zoom conventions. Did either of them matter as terms as giving either candidate the traditional convention bounce or reframing the race? Yeah. You know, Henry, it's a really good question because we love these events that
historically have been able to sort of guide us, right? That they have traditionally been the kickoff to the election for voters who may not have been checking into politics. This is their, for most of the last three years, here's their chance to kind of get a taste for what the parties are talking about. But you know, as well as anybody that these last three and a half years have been
Not normal in terms of traditional politics. And in fact, we've been talking about nothing but Donald Trump for the last 30 and a half years. So it's just, I mean, again, we still have to wait and see what these post-convention polls. Honestly, it's remarkable how stable this race has been, considering how volatile it
political environment is. And that's to say that opinions of the president really don't move that much. Opinions of Joe Biden haven't moved that much. And the question in my mind is really what the margin of the race looks like and whether it's narrowed enough to
to make this race more competitive than it was, say, in June or July, when it looked as if the president was in something of a free fall, right? He was coming in at 38%, 39% in a lot of these national polls. His job approval rating was down at that level. It seemed every single day all he was doing was playing defense, that there was just...
The coronavirus spikes, the George Floyd protests, the decision by the president to clear out Lafayette Square for the photo op with the Bible, all of these things, it was just like day after day after day, the
Focus was on the president and it wasn't in a good way. And Joe Biden was just enjoying being out of the spotlight. Now, both candidates were under the glare. And clearly, the president is making a much more concerted effort to go after Joe Biden. So I would suspect the race is.
tightens up a little bit. But, you know, I don't really expect to see the kinds of bounces pre-historic days. I'm looking right now at the real clear politics average. And this is Wednesday afternoon, East Coast time. And Trump has bounced back, but he's still at only a little over 44 percent, down to disapproved by nine points.
We are, I think, 61 days out from the election or 62 days out. These are pretty terrible numbers, even with the slight improvement that he's seen over the last couple of weeks. Where does it go from here? Yeah, so it seems, Henry, that we've had this conversation so many times over the course of the last two and a half years, which is it really goes back to the sort of basic question of
Um, for this president and the question that we've had, I guess it's not even the last two years. It's been since he was elected in 2016. It was boy, he won without popular getting a popular vote, winning the popular vote, lost it by a little over two points. Um,
He won the Electoral College basically by a little over 78,000 votes. He carried, I think it's six states with less than 50% of the vote. That's not something that you want to let stand. But what we see time and time again is he's been unable to do that in part because I just don't think he's interested in doing that. He loves the fight more than he loves the idea of, you know,
getting converts, I guess, and winning people over with compromise. And so what that means is if he's trapped, then as you said, he's at 44 now. Let's say that he gets back to where he was in 2016. He's back at 46% of the popular vote. But without third-party candidates, significant third-party candidates like we had in 2016,
Being able to win not just a popular vote, but even in these states with less than 50 percent is really, really hard. Right. And so that's always been my question is, you know, is is his ceiling in these states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and Arizona different?
the 47, 46, 48 that he got in 2016? Or can he expand upon that? And you need to expand upon that if you're really just in a two-way race. Or you have to do all that you can to make sure that Joe Biden's coalition doesn't show up. And that's what they were trying to do a little bit of at the convention, but I don't know how successful that was.
And one of the things that has struck me throughout this presidency is that here's a guy who defied all the political experts coming from. Yes, he was a nationally known figure. But if you go back to June or July, I forget exactly when he came down the escalator. 2015, he's nationally known, but he's upside down in the public's of our field, even among Republicans. Yeah. And.
yeah his genius is in changing a negative opinion of himself among republicans to a largely positive one over the span of a year and a half but if republicans were a majority of the country the entire country's history during my lifetime would have been different minority party since 1932 as far as an identification is concerned
And he doesn't seem to understand that he needs more than that. And I look at what's going on right now with Kenosha, and I think here's another opportunity for him to show leadership. And instead, he sows division, which energizes one side and rages the other side.
I mean, are we basically going to be looking at 62 day campaign that will be nothing but reruns of what we've seen for the last three and a half years and end up roughly where we began, which is where the president can't get above the 46 percent? It sure feels that way, doesn't it? I mean, it is if you look at it, if you're the president,
looking on the bright side for the president. It is remarkable, as you pointed out, that a guy who had 100% name ID when he started his race in 2015, but was upside down with Republicans, has now become probably the best intra-party president that we've seen in recent memory, at least that I have. You know, that his ability to keep...
His core, the core Republican support, despite everything that's happened, is pretty remarkable. And where he started from, which was, I think he had a 40% favorable rating among Republicans. But if we all know that, you know, winning elections is about getting independence. And he actually carried independence by a point or two last time, 2016. Yeah.
Now, again, with 46%. So it was, I guess the surprising piece for me is both that he chose not to try to expand his base, but also not count on, or he really seemed to count on other candidates getting into this race and splitting that vote. That's not Trump and not a Democrat. Yeah.
Or maybe it just wasn't even that calculated. I think that's right. I think I'm I do. I get, you know, where I get frustrated with any candidate or any campaign is not on like where they are ideologically or any of those things. It's really much more like, oh, my gosh, why aren't you running a better campaign? Right. Don't you see this right in front of you?
Um, and I, I know there are people around him who know that, but you have a candidate who really does believe that the only way to win is to be on complete offense, never back down, never look like you're compromising. And, um,
I was talking with someone who's been doing a lot of focus groups, especially in suburban areas, who said, you know, if I had to sum up three words in this election, this is a Republican who's been doing this, three words in this election that these voters want, it's normal presidential leadership. That's it. All right. That is what they're looking for. And
The president shows these little flashes, right, like he did at the convention. He stays on script, focuses on topics that are important to voters, doesn't, you know, talk about conspiracy theories or attack certain people over Twitter, you know, just behaves in a normal traditional way. But that's not sustainable.
Yeah, that's the thing I think the president's supporters just need. Of course, many of the president's supporters at least purport to like the inflammatory, confrontational Trump. But I wrote a column earlier this year that said that it's the difference between teleprompter Trump and Twitter Trump. And ultimately, Twitter Trump always comes back, usually within a couple of days, almost like he's throwing off the shackles.
Nate Silver, you may not have seen this because he only tweeted this within the last hour. Now, the man, the master of models, let's call him the model master, has a
Another model. And he says that the chance of a Biden Electoral College win if he wins the popular vote by X points is and then he goes down and he says it's a 46 percent chance of Biden winning the Electoral College if he wins the popular vote nationally by two to three points and a 74 percent chance if he wins it by three to four points. Right. Do you agree with that?
Yeah, I mean, I do think, so let's, here's what's, and you'll appreciate this more than almost anybody. I just did this today, is look at, all right, let's go through modern history, basically starting in 1980. I realize people are going to disagree that that's modern electoral history. But, you know, you look back to when Reagan came.
won by seven points. Actually, I think I started in 1988. So George H.W. Bush winning by seven points got him close to 80% of the Electoral College vote. And for Obama, I think he got something like 62% of the Electoral College vote winning by eight. We're even more polarized now than we were in 2008. So to me, when I, again, my
back of the envelope, I'm not a modeler math. My very rudimentary math is that a seven point popular vote gets Biden. I think a best case scenario is like 320 electoral votes.
It puts a real, even seven points, I don't think is enough to flip, say, Georgia or Texas. North Carolina's right on the bubble. I mean, I would give it to Trump.
But it could also go the other way. So it looks, I mean, this is what I kind of keep coming back to, Henry, is what 2018 was, which was eight-point generic ballot. And we can't, it's apples and oranges and it's presidential turnout. I appreciate all that. But, you know, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan stayed, you know, are pretty good.
democratic wins. And then, which obviously is enough to get Biden there. And then you have Arizona, Florida, and we didn't have North Carolina race in 2018, but I put. This season, Instacart has your back to school, as in they've got your back to school lunch favorites like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies like backpacks, binders and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually
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you are to, you know, the lower end of that margin, the harder it is for Democrats to get the Senate. So what I'm hearing you say is that maybe Trump can lose by more than three points and still get the election. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's possible. I mean, if you, you know, again, if you, if what you're saying, if what you are looking at is again, very rudimentary, but
Hillary wins by two points, loses Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan by less than a point. You know, you'd feel pretty comfortable then saying, okay, as long as Biden gets three to four points, he wins. But that's still like, I don't know that I would feel that comfortable given all that we know about turnout dynamics.
Yeah, I mean, one thing I saw in the 2018 exit polls, you know, caveat exit polls are exit polls. Yes, yes, yes. But is that Trump tended to run a few points ahead in job approval ratings in all of these states that you look at Wisconsin. And he ran about three points ahead of his national job approval rating. He got 51% or 50% job approval rating in Arizona, which, and this is on a turnout that most observers say favored Trump.
The Democrats, I mean, it's huge and Republicans did turn out, but there was more intensity on the Democratic side in 2018. And most people, including your colleague, Dave Wasserman, believe that white working class voters are likelier to turn out in the presidential year.
So I look at this and I think you're right. You know, three points might be a little, you know, maybe the cusp point may not be five points, but maybe the cusp point is more like three and a half to four points, which they get 46 percent scenario. If he's getting 46 percent nationally, maybe he's getting 49 or 50 percent in some of these places. That's right. The weak candidates as the.
third party candidates are. And that opens up that possibility again. Yep. Yep. You know, and so, of course, there's a difference, though, if I think to your point is, is he had a 46 job approval rating or is he getting 46 percent of the vote? Right. So if it's 53, 46 is your final margin. That means that Biden is actually potentially
you know, able to, he will do better among white working class slash, you know, other lower propensity voters, voters who didn't show up in 2018 either. And what we're seeing, for example, when I look at the Pew poll,
from this last, they were in at the end of July, early August. So it's obviously now very old. But to me, what was the most fascinating piece of it was comparing it to their version of exit polls, where it was a voter validated survey, right? They're doing these online panels. And so they're able, they know that the people that
They are interviewing after election day in 2016 are people who actually cast a ballot. And what they see now, when you compare that 2016 result to where we are now, it's those, those folks who said in 2016, I didn't vote for either candidate. And that was, that was six points nationally. That's a lot. They're breaking 55% for Biden right now. And so it's,
To that point if you take away in those states, right you say yes Trump on on paper is at 46 but he's now instead of just losing by two points. He's losing by seven That means that you know, he's still capped out but I think our overall point remains that if
I would not feel all that if this becomes by the end of October, you know, Trump suddenly is
back up at 46, 47% job approval rating. Yeah. This thing's an absolute toss up. Yeah. That's always been my target is if Trump hits 47% job approval rating, he's got a better than a coin flip chance of winning the election. And if he's in the 46 to 47 range, he's got maybe a little less than a coin flip. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds totally right to me. That sounds so right. So that's the question, right? What does he do to get himself? Yeah.
Up there, I mean, the good news, as I said, between, you know, for much of August has been that there hasn't been more bad news in terms of COVID or the economy. And, you know, we're starting to, it seems Americans are adjusting their lives more.
in a way that in April, May, and June we still hadn't quite figured out. Is that enough? Or does he need something more to go well? I don't know.
Or make people scared of Joe Biden, which is clearly what he's trying to do with the unrest and the rioting in all of these different cities. Today, Portland's mayor announced that he's moving to avoid the people camped outside of his home. Oh, wow.
It's not Joe Biden, but it's not a good sign. No, it's not. But that goes to my question, though, to you, Henry, which is, is it better for, I guess, you're right, in some ways, by getting people turned off from Biden or disillusioned with the idea of Biden, maybe just as good as improving his own job approval rating, but...
The easier path for Trump in some ways is for him to do better rather than to hope that these attacks on Biden are going to stick. And, you know, we're again, we're only 60 days out. And at this point in 2016, Hillary Clinton was like at minus 15 in terms of her favorables and her strong unfavorables.
were a lot higher than where Bidens have ever been. And, you know, you could see at the convention that there's just not a really clear, clean attack line on Joe Biden, right? Is he, you know, being pulled by the strings of Antifa and radical leftists? Is he sleepy and, you
you know, not all there mentally? Is he too much part of the establishment that has given us all these terrible economic and social policies over the last 50 years? None of them seem to have been really effective in denting Biden in the way that, you know, Crooked Hillary and, you
all of that worked against Clinton. Yeah, it really does seem to me like Trump is the political version of John Belushi in the sewer in the Blues Brothers facing Carrie Fisher, where he's trying to get out of being killed by his vengeful ex-girlfriend, and he comes up with every excuse under the book why he wasn't there at the altar. It's a fire, a terrible flood. Yeah.
So we're running out of time, but I want to ask you two questions. One is the Senate.
is three to four points nationally is really the cusp point for Trump, not two to three. What's the cusp point on the Senate for the Democrats to get to the 50-50 tie where a vice president can break it? And the second question is, what do you have to say about what all of my Trumpian listeners are going to be saying to all of our conversation, which is don't believe the polls, the shy Trump voter is real. Right. Yeah.
Well, let's talk about the Senate, because you're right. You would think that based on even just immediate past history, right, the 2016 election where no Senate candidate won a state that their presidential nominee did not also win, that it really does depend more than ever on the ability for Trump to win some of these states, North Carolina, Iowa,
especially because I think of all of the sort of vulnerable seats that Trump could end up winning or states that Trump could end up winning that also have Senate races, those two would be the most important. So even if Democrats won Arizona and Colorado and Maine, they'd still be a seat short because more than likely that Doug Jones is going to lose in Alabama.
At the same time, what we've also noticed is that in North Carolina, Tom Tillis and in Iowa, Joni Ernst, and even in Arizona with Martha McSally, they're all running behind Trump. And that it's not, you know, if you're Susan Collins in Maine, what you're the most worried about or Cory Gardner in Colorado is how much can I overperform Trump? He's not going to do well here. But if you're in North Carolina and Trump is winning,
Let's say he wins North Carolina, but again, it's really close. It's a point. And Tom Tillis is trailing the president by three. That may not even be enough. Same in Iowa.
where maybe we see a divergence there. I don't know that we will. So my take would be the closer the margin, the harder for Democrats to get any of those, the closer the presidential margin.
For the shy Trump voter, you know, it's interesting. I think that I point to a couple of things. The first is that pollsters learned a lot after 2016. You know this very well, right? The weighting by education being so important. We also know, though, that response rates continue to decline. So it's not simply that the...
pollsters have to be better about getting a sample that is less highly educated, but getting the right kind of non-college voters. There's a big difference between someone who works, say, in the service industry and someone who, again, not a four-year college degree holder, who works, say, in construction or construction
another sort of industry like that, with the white collar being leaning more Dem. All that said, I think the, if we've learned anything from these last four years, is that the people who support Trump are not particularly shy about it. And that in 2016, I think a lot of those shy Trump voters were people that you knew, and by you meaning the sort of like
you know, people knew who were normally Republicans, right? Who would have voted for a Republican. And there was sort of a social outcast notion to that saying in front of people that were in your social circle that you were voting for him. But then we saw, you know, Republicans rallying around the president. So I don't think any of us believe that people who identify as Republicans are going
are not going to vote for Trump in the end. What I do think, though, is, especially when I talk to some pollsters who are waiting by vote, 2016 vote choice, and when you are talking to a voter and you ask them, who did you vote for?
And they tell you, and then you get your poll back. And if that number looked ridiculous, right, like 53% said they voted for Hillary Clinton. Well, then you know that your sample is terrible. But mostly what we're finding is the recall vote matches up with the 2016 vote. In other words, I don't think people are hiding their support or their disdain for the president. What's also happening is, as I said, you've got people who voted third party,
what they're doing, people who voted for, who didn't show up in 2016 or who are newly registered. That's a whole new group of people that I think were either encouraged to register to vote to vote for or to vote against Donald Trump. So I do think, look, this is why the margin matters. This is why Joe Biden, going all the way back to our earlier point, I would much rather be up by seven than four.
Because if you knock a point off that, even if you just say, fine, I'll give you a shy Trump voter that is like 1.5% total national vote. Okay. Well, now you're getting down to three points. Now I'm not feeling great if I'm on team Biden. Well, so maybe this won't be 60 days of kabuki theater because even small changes could make the difference when we're talking about the Electoral College. Right. Right. Right.
That could be so much better. Plus, we've got the debates. I think those matter. I don't know that they shift the race wholesale, but I do think, to your point, if what happens after the debates is this thing tightens up even more, or maybe that's it and there's no coming back for Trump. Those of those seem plausible to me where that becomes clear by early October. And then, of course, people are going to be turning in their ballot. And we have no idea what that's going to look like.
Well, sounds to me like earthquakes, floods, chaos, dragons. I'm just wishing that the end of our Game of Thrones that we've been living through is a little less violent. I would, too. Thank you. I'd really enjoy that. You know, I'm trying to make it for a few more years. Yeah.
Well, Amy, thank you again for a very interesting and very knowledgeable look at American politics. And I really encourage all of you who do not want to shell out the very reasonable but not cheap amount of money for the political report to listen to Amy on Politics with Amy Walter on your local NPR station. And it's podcastable.
It's also on podcast. Yeah, yeah. Everything gets turned into a podcast. You can just type in in your little Google search politics with Amy Walter. It'll take you to the podcast page and download to your heart's content. So there we go. You can pair up Horse Race with Henry Olsen, Politics with Amy Walter. It's the width that just kind of like brings us together here.
Well, this is really fun. Great, great conversation. Really appreciate this. Thank you very much for returning to the horse. This week, we have a super extended edition of ad of the week. We're going to have seven. Yes. Count them. Seven ads grouped around three races. Each grouping will involve competing ads, ads from each of the two major party candidates and each group.
grouping will have a lesson which explains how these ads interact with each other and also gives you an idea of how different parties can be pursuing similar yet also different tax depending on the particular race.
We're going to start with New Mexico 2. New Mexico 2 is a largely rural and small town district in southern and southeastern New Mexico. It is one of the more Republican seats that the Democrats flipped in 2018. Sushil Torres-Small defeated Yvette Harrell by a very narrow margin two years ago, and both candidates are back for a rematch.
This is a district that Donald Trump won with 51 percent of the vote back in 2016. And it's a district that, despite his drop in the polls, is one he is likely to carry again this time. So let's see how both candidates are going after each other in the ads that they're airing with that in mind. First, the Torres small attack ad on Harrell.
Yvette Harrell wrote the book on political corruption. While in Santa Fe, Harrell pursued personal profit from state contracts, landing a lucrative deal of nearly a half million dollars in taxpayer-funded government contracts to Harrell's own company, securing another half million to an organization run by her own mother.
The Journal called Harrell's actions egregious and a betrayal. Yvette Harrell profits. We pay the price. DCCC is responsible for the content of this advertising. And now, let's listen to Harrell's attack ad on Torres Small.
Radical environmentalists are on a mission to destroy New Mexico's energy jobs, to pass their socialist Green New Deal, to elect Xochitl Torres-Small. And Torres-Small lined her pockets with their money, over $175,000. Who will stand up to Torres-Small and the liberal mob?
The NRCC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
Both of those have some similarities. Obviously, they both go on the attack against each of their opponents. But there, it pretty much goes away as far as what the similarities are. The first ad, the one that is Torres Small's attack ad, is what's known as a negative ad. It is exclusively negative, saying bad things about Yvette Harrell. There's not a word to be said about
Tora is small and there's not a word even at the end to suggest that she has anything to do with the campaign.
However, the ad that Harrell's campaign is running is one that's known as a contrast ad. Part of the ad is negative on Torres Small. Part of the ad is positive on Yvette Harrell. The reason it's called a contrast ad is because it's meant to show that there's a difference between two people, A and B. Negative ads are only designed to show that one shouldn't be voting for candidate B because
rather than trying to show how candidate A is better than candidate B. Contrast versus negative ads are two of the main techniques that campaigns use in order to bring unflattering information about their opponent to light. The technical aspects and the message aspects also differ.
What you can't see when you listen is that the anti-Harrell ad has her name on the screen for most of the time. It opens with a fake book that says political corruption by Yvette Harrell. It opens and you find out that it's a pop-up book and her picture pops up. And underneath each page...
is usually her name and the charge that's being levied against her. Remember what I've been saying throughout, if you're a regular listener, it's always a good idea to both say the attack and have words or pictures that reinforce the attack on a television ad. That way, people who have a hard time listening can see the ad, people who have a hard time seeing can hear the ad, people who have both have it drummed into them more completely by using both senses.
On the other hand, Harrell's ad doesn't really do that at all. There's only very little mention of Torres Small by name. There's a lot of pictures that are thrown up of Nancy Pelosi and AOC, but she doesn't use that device that I think is very effective in driving home the message. She does do that, however, on her part of the ad. Her name is on the screen a lot with the message she wants to portray on
during the positive part of the contrast ad.
The third thing that we want to look at is the nature of the attack. The nature of the attack in Harrell's case is partly nonpartisan. She takes, Tora Small takes money from unsavory characters, but largely partisan, talking about energy jobs and the Green New Deal. This is meant to attract Trump voters and Republicans, which, as we noted, is the dominant demographic group in this district. Note, however, what the Democrat does.
She is going after her female opponent on a nonpartisan message. She doesn't strike themes that are likely to embrace or engage with the partisan divide. She's basically saying Yvette Harrell is out for herself. Again, this is smart politics because as a Democrat, she's not likely to be on good position to be taking on a Republican in a Republican-leaning district on partisan issues.
These things should be kept in mind. The mnemonic devices of visual and aural combined. The nature of the message looked at with who you're trying to persuade. Is it partisan or nonpartisan?
And also, the contrast versus the negative ad, that the contrast is meant to show that one person is better than another, another is simply designed to knock the other person down. These techniques are frequently used across the board, and here in this race, we see how they interact with each other so that both sides are competing for the same voter, but in very different ways. Now, let's take a look at New York's 22nd Congressional District.
New York's 22nd District also features a rematch in a heavily Republican seat. This one is in upstate New York, and it features the former Republican Congresswoman, Claudia Tenney, and the current Democratic Congressman, Anthony Brindisi.
Let's see whether or not you can pick up both similarities between this set of attack ads and the last set, and also one very important difference. Let's start with the first of two ads from people backing Anthony Brindisi. The first from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Look who's back.
Career politician Claudia Tenney, bankrolled by Spectrum Cable. While Spectrum was jacking up our rates, Tenney worked to protect their profits, voting to give Spectrum a $9 billion tax break. She even voted to let Spectrum sell customers personal data and browsing history without their permission. Claudia Tenney was part of the problem in Washington. Why would we ever send her back? DCCC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
And now let's hear from the super PAC that is backing Speaker Pelosi's candidates, the House Majority PAC.
In Washington, follow the money. Spectrum gave 10 grand in campaign cash to Claudia Tenney. Then Tenney voted for a bill that gave Spectrum a huge tax break worth $9 billion, all while Spectrum made you pay more. Tenney even voted to let Spectrum sell your personal information without your consent.
When Claudia Tenney helps corporate interests, she hurts upstate New York. House Majority PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising. And now, let's hear how the National Republican Campaign Committee is going after Brindisi. When President Trump fights for us, Nancy Pelosi obstructs him. And Anthony Brindisi helps Pelosi do it. Brindisi backed Pelosi's bill requiring the release of violent prisoners, even murderers and rapists.
Pelosi wanted it, so Brindisi agreed. Anthony Brindisi even backed Pelosi's anti-police bill to help accused criminals and prevent police from protecting us. Because Anthony Brindisi backs criminals over cops and Pelosi over us. NRCC is responsible for the content of this ad. Wow.
First of all, how are they similar to the New Mexico 2 ads? In all three cases, all the candidates are using the mnemonic device that I just talked about. They have the charge and the picture and the name of the person they are going after on the screen for all or most of the ad. They also, they're all negative ads. None of them are contrast ads. So in this, they are all trying to drive the other person down.
However, note three things. One, the Democrat incumbent is using, again, nonpartisan themes. It's not talking about things that would divide Republican from Democrat. They're talking about Claudia Tenney's allegedly being in the back pocket of the local cable company, Spectrum. This is a nonpartisan attack that is used by candidates to
in a district that does not favor them on partisan demographics so that they can score effective hits without driving up and bringing up wedge issues that could cause some of their normally crossover voters to go back to their own party.
It also uses a local issue. Nobody else in the country is going to be talking about Spectrum Cable Company. This is a local concern to the people in this, again, largely rural or small town district. This is another use of a local issue to drive a larger point that is often used by candidates in districts that do not have the partisan advantage.
Contrast this, however, with what the NRCC is doing. They know Trump is going to win this district. So they're trying to remind Republicans who are going to vote for Trump that Anthony Brindisi isn't on the side of their party. That's why they tie Brindisi to Nancy Pelosi and why they bring up Donald Trump's name. The issue that they're talking about,
crime, unrest is also the same issue that Donald Trump is talking about, trying to create symmetry between the national campaign and the local campaign. Here, the Democrat is trying to say, you should cross over and vote for me, Anthony Brindisi, or more accurately, not vote for Claudia Tenney because she's not on your side. Forget all of those other partisan issues.
The Tenney campaign, through its allied group, the National Republican Congressional Committee, is trying to say the opposite, trying to say to the Republican-leaning voter, vote your party.
that this person isn't for you on the things that really matter for you. Note also how the ads link up to each other, that the Republican ad links up to the national campaign theme, whereas the two ads that are being run by the Democratic outside groups link up with one another. They're nearly identical in the charges that they make, and that means that they're reinforcing the message even though they're not coordinating with each other.
These sorts of techniques coordinate, not formally coordinating, but creating patterns so that an ad can be reinforced through repetition with something else that the person is hearing, whether it's a national campaign or another independent group of ads, is another sort of technique that's used by campaigns that are trying to bring a swing voter over to their side and help them to remember a message.
Now we're going to take a look at a third set of ads, also from an upstate New York district, but one of a very different partisan nature than the one that we've been looking at before. These two ads are from the New York 24th Congressional District. John Katko used to put central New York first, but after five years, his priorities changed.
The drug industry gave John Katko's campaign over $160,000. Katko gave them a $40 billion tax cut. And Central New York families pay the price. Katko sided with drug companies and voted against a bipartisan bill to lower prescription drug prices. John Katko doesn't put Central New York first anymore. DCCC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
I'm supporting Medicare for all in a district where the conventional wisdom is that you can't do that. I'm going to interrupt now. It costs $30 trillion. Let's get that straight. $30 trillion. We would pay for Medicare for all with a health care tax. How many of you like your employer-based health care? Finish. You can't have it anymore. That's what Medicare for all does. You cannot have it. Period.
It's the attitude as elitists that we know better than ordinary people. NRCC is responsible for the content of this advertising. Well, in some ways, these are very similar to some of the other ads. Again, we have negative ads, not contrast ads. Again, both parties' ads use the name and screen and the message mnemonic devices that I've been talking about to drive home the message.
The Democratic ad again uses a nonpartisan attack to try and get at John Katko, the Republican incumbent.
So what's different about this set of ads? Well, you probably recognize the voice of someone who you've heard a lot about or heard a lot from in the last year, Joe Biden. And yes, that was in the Republican ad. The Republican ad used the name and the picture and the words of John Katko's Democratic challenger, Dana Balter.
And trying to show that she is too liberal for the district. She supports Medicare for all and they use her own recorded words. But then in a very interesting twist, they use Joe Biden's attack on Medicare for all during the Democratic presidential primaries.
to attack Balter. Now, they never appeared on the same stage together in this way, but what they do is they carefully splice together the picture of Balter after having made her claims about Medicare for All with pictures of Biden, who presumably is attacking Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan, which is what Balter is endorsing. Now, why would Republicans do this?
Well, this is a district that is based in Syracuse, New York. It is a district that voted for Barack Obama twice and voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, even though it is a working class district that made Trump's margin of defeat against Clinton much smaller than either Romney's or McCain's against Obama.
So what the Republican is trying to do is talk to the swing voter that they need, which is Democrats who have voted for John Katko over the last couple of elections. And they're using a Democratic authority, Joe Biden, to do so. This is a very interesting twist on what the Republican or what the Democrats were doing in the Republican-leaning districts.
Here, however, they're using a partisan attack ad because the nonpartisan attack presumably won't work. Dana Balter is not an incumbent, and there's presumably no record of corruption. However, this is a district with a lot of working-class people, a lot of union people, a lot of people who may want subsidized health care but are the sort of people who voted for Joe Biden, not Bernie Sanders. What they're trying to do is say if you're a Biden Democrat,
you can feel comfortable with John Katko, not because you necessarily like Katko, but because Dana Bolter is exactly like the type of Democrat you don't like. This is another interesting way to attract swing voters in a district where you don't hold the partisan advantage. And it's one that I have not seen used by a Democrat in reverse in Republican seats in quite some time. One final point on all seven ads is,
Have you noticed how they all kind of run together? They all kind of have a negative tone. There's an announcer who's intoning in some way that has a deep voice or an attacking or disapproving voice with that eerie tone.
negative sounding music in the background. One of the problems with ads like this is when viewed in isolation, they can seem to be very effective. So if you do a focus group, which most candidates or campaigns do, you can test the ad and the person who's listening or watching can remember the ad. But
But imagine as you do, well, not imagine, many of you have experienced around campaign time, your Ava waves are filled with ads that all look like this, that all sound like this. One of the questions that a campaign has to ask is can the ad break through that clutter where everyone is trying to do something similar? None of these ads have that home run quality that just make them stand out from amidst the crowd.
And the static. And consequently, it's one reason why we have increasing partisanship in elections is that if the ads and the messages that you're making aren't standing out from everybody else, then the thing you default back to is party.
In some cases, that's a good thing. In each of these three districts, though, these candidates don't want people to default to party. It'll be interesting to see whether or not the three candidates, incumbents, each of whom have bucked party trends in recent elections, can continue to do so in an election that most observers say is nearly completely a referendum on Donald Trump.
These things, these things that they share, these challenges that they face, and the ways that they try and come about them are all indicative of how campaigns run their ads with purposes in mind, but also how the interaction of them can both tell you how the campaign strategies differ and also how candidates are faced with competing claims or competing arguments that they have to weigh and sift. And those interactions
interesting similarities, differences, and interactions are why all seven are this week's Ads of the Week. That's it for this week's horse race. I'll be in Alaska next week researching that state's most interesting Senate and House contests. I'm Henry Olson, and I'll see you in two weeks in the Winner's Circle.
