If persuasion advertising works, how did the candidate with the fewest resources win big on Super Tuesday?
After Joe Biden won in states like Virginia, Texas, even Massachusetts many were quick to place the blame on the effectiveness of advertising itself.
https://twitter.com/fmanjoo/status/1235252651626876929
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/1235032104137879552?s=20
Money alone cannot buy a presidential nomination. But those who take that a step further and suggest that persuasion advertising doesn’t work get it completely wrong.
The reality is Bloomberg (and Steyer’s) advertising blitzes did move people. In polls conducted through February 18th, Bloomberg went from nowhere to second place based almost entirely on advertising (TV/digital/mail). In states like Virginia, he’d vaulted all the way into first place. (Source: FiveThirtyEight.com)
Everything changed on February 19th. In the most watched moment of the most watched primary debate twenty million people saw Elizabeth Warren eliminate Bloomberg’s viability as a candidate. Voters saw the viral moments millions more times after the debate. Bloomberg’s topline numbers and favorability immediately tanked.
That wasn’t the only reason Bloomberg’s advertising didn’t buy wins on Super Tuesday. The sheer size of Bloomberg’s ad spending itself – more in 100 days than Hillary Clinton’s entire primary and general election campaign combined – highlighted the ridiculous income inequality between Bloomberg and just about everyone else. Bloomberg did his best to inoculate against this reality, but a billionaire buying a Democratic primary was always going to be a tough sell in an election year where income inequality is so top of mind.
Presidential campaigns are terrible places to test the efficacy of persuasion advertising. There’s so much noise around big campaigns and people consume so much information that separating the effect of a single variable is nearly impossible. Major presidential campaigns spend money on TV, digital, mail, and field, they are constantly on TV, written about in major media outlets and discussed heavily on social media. They are the subject of foreign information warfare. With so many different forces acting on individuals, it is impossible to create control groups to test the effects of any single variable.
Here’s the secret: in smaller campaigns we can actually see how individual advertising tactics change a race’s dynamic. We can create control groups that are much more reliable. We can see – thanks to tracking polls – how a race develops when our paid advertising is a much bigger piece of the overall information pie a voter receives.
Here’s what I’ve learned after two decades of testing tactics:
1) The bigger the campaign, the less paid advertising controls the debate. If you’re running in a down-ballot race and you’re not a celebrity, you’re unlikely to win without spending significant money. A few digital ads or an active Facebook page won’t do it. Absent a few exceptions that still may require some luck, the candidate who spends a significant amount on well messaged and targeted advertising will beata candidate who doesn’t spend on persuasion Every. Single. Time.
(The exceptions: an extremely well-known candidate; a large infusion of free media; a huge partisan advantage/climate; a race so small the candidate can deliver the message personally to a critical mass of voter’s multiple times.)
2) Sometimes persuasion is the best use of resources; sometimes it’s turnout. Usually it’s both. Be realistic when you decide where to spend your money. Don’t expect turnout operations to give you a 15-point boost. Don’t try to win 40% of Republicans with persuasion mail.
3) An existing voter you persuade is worth two voters you turn out. It’s true. Here’s the math. In a primary with two evenly matched candidates, Candidate A spends enough money to persuade 5% of the existing electorate of 100 people. Candidate B spends enough money to add 5% of new, friendly voters to the electorate. Candidate A ends up with 55 votes. (50 voters to start plus 5 of the existing electorate) Candidate B ends up with 50 votes. (45 voters after losing 5 to candidate A, plus 5 new voters)
A related point: don’t define your persuasion universe too narrowly. Your most persuadable voters need the most effort, but your base needs to know who you are. The 20-point swing you get from winning your base 90-10 instead of 80-20 matters just as much as a 20-point swing with persuadable voters.
4) Game theory explains most prominent multi-candidate races – especially presidential races. I would argue that Elizabeth Warren didn’tdo so poorly on Super Tuesday because she ran an uninspiring campaign. Instead, I believe many of her voters calculated that either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders would win the nomination and realized a vote for Warren would cost them a chance at affecting the ultimate outcome. Super Tuesday might have looked quite different with ranked choice voting.
This is the same reason that multi-candidate primaries tend to consolidate to one or two serious front runners at the end, even in a race with lots of truly undecided voters. Undecided voters tend to choose between the top two candidates according to conventional wisdom.
We still live in a world where money matters and where advertising moves voters. Ads start conversations and they amplify messages. Campaigns that de-emphasize advertising do so at their own risk.