If you started watching every political ad aired in the run-up to the November election in 2018 on New Year’s Day, it would take you until somewhere around Labor Day to see them all.
And that’s just the ads for Minnesota’s eight congressional, two U.S. Senate and statewide races such as governor, attorney general and secretary of state. It doesn’t include legislative elections or local contests.
In fact, the 2018 election in Minnesota saw an unprecedented amount of political advertising: $120 million was spent on 671,000 political ads on television, cable and radio to influence voting. That’s according to an accounting of every ad listed in FCC filings by a team of student journalists as part of a project at the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
This is the first election cycle that such ad-spending data can be easily gathered, since the Federal Communications Commission only recently required cable operators to file documentation of ad purchases electronically. The data — which detailed political ad purchases at every TV, cable and radio station in Minnesota — was collected on a week-by-week basis, providing an opportunity to study election advertising by campaigns and outside groups in close-to-real time.
“It’s just crazy. I don’t think anyone was expecting it to be that much,” David Canon, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said of the $120 million figure. “That is a lot of money.”
Close races, late buying
Comparing 2018 ad spending to previous elections cycles is difficult, in part because of the looser requirements for filing of cable ad buys before this year. But data show that spending at the top four Twin Cities television stations almost doubled from 2016, a presidential election. About $23 million in ads ran on those stations two years ago, compared with almost $43 million this year. In the 2014 midterm, WCCO and KARE, the only stations of the top four for which data are available, sold more than $14 million in ad time. This year the amount exceeded $25 million.
The results reflected Minnesota’s status as a key battleground state in an election that set a national record for midterm spending. Nationally, candidates and interest groups spent a midterm-record $5.2 billion, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That includes all spending, not just TV and radio advertising.
Much of the money was spent in the last weeks before Election Day. Early on, experts had projected record spending, and by early October, more than $70 million had been spent on ads in Minnesota.
But as polls showed many races tightening through October, more money started to pour in, with ad buys worth almost $46 million across the state being filed with the FCC from Oct. 9 to Nov. 13. That translates to roughly 346,000 ads. (Not all of those ads ran during that late period, however. In some cases, TV and radio stations simply made late filings for ads that had run earlier.)
While Minnesota may not get the same attention in 2020 as it did in 2018, big spending is here to stay, said Steven Schier, professor emeritus of political science at Carleton College. “There are so many people wanting to influence the outcome of elections and so many people in organizations with money, and they find ways to spend it,” he said.
Democrats outspend Republicans
Nationally, Democratic candidates turned the tables on the Republicans this year, outspending them by a projected $300 million for total campaign…
