Negative Tone of Recall Elections

This week a report was released by the politcal-ad tracking firm, Kantar Media CMAG, that 
depicts the political tone of the thousands of political ads that ran over Wisconsin airwaves the past several months as part of the historic, nine recall State Senate elections.  CMAG tracked political ads in the Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay and Minneapolis televison markets.

The report showed that of the estimated $12 million in campaign ads in the four television markets roughly 95 percent of the ads were considered to be "negative" ads and only 5 percent of the ads were viewed as positive. (CMAG defines a negative ad as one that contain criticism of the opposing candidate and positive ads as those as only having positive information about one candidate and no negative information about the other).  It is important to note that the CMAG report only covers the months of June, July and August and does not include a study of the ads that ran in the La Crosse/Eau Claire and Wausau/Rhinelander markets, which also had recall elections.

The report also showed that the spending on the ads was fairly competitive between the two sides. Of the $12 million that was spent on TV ads, about 55 percent was spent by the Democrats and their allies with 45 percent being spent by the Republicans and their allies. Moreover, 89 percent of the ad spending was done by special interest groups and only 11 percent was done by the actual candidates. Lastly, the report showed that 99 percent of the ads run by Democrats were negative and 89 percent of the ads run by the GOP were negative (www.jsonline.com).

The top-spending groups on television ads in the four markets were:

* data from www.jsonline.com

To read the Kantar Media CMAG report click here.