The gulf between what Democrats in Washington are pointing to as the stakes of this year’s election and what candidates are actually doing with their money is particularly striking.
-
Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have “>10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.
Give this articleGive this articleGive this article
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 riot held hearings on Thursday.
It is one of the great ironies of the 2022 midterm campaigns: A topic Democrats have cast as an existential issue hanging over the election is practically invisible on the nation’s airwaves, despite nearly a billion dollars in overall ad spending this year.
Since Labor Day, Democrats have shelled out just $4 million for television advertisements that mention the words “insurrection,” “January 6th,” or “January Six,” according to data provided to The New York Times by AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ads.
With the House committee investigating the assault on the Capitol voting on Thursday to subpoena former President Donald J. Trump, the gulf between what Democrats in Washington are pointing to as the stakes of this year’s election — and what candidates are actually doing with their money — is particularly striking.
Instead of hammering Republicans on their defense of the Capitol riot, Democratic candidates and allied groups have concentrated a plurality of their ad dollars on abortion, which has consumed more than 40 percent of the party’s television ad spending on Senate races since Labor Day, and other subjects that appear to motivate voters at a much higher clip than Jan. 6.
Several pollsters and strategists who insisted on anonymity in order to speak about internal party research explained that the dearth of Jan. 6-themed ads is driven by polling and focus groups that suggest voters are far more concerned about issues that affect their own lives than they are about events that took place in Washington nearly two years ago.
Pollsters working in Senate races, for instance, said they had advised Democratic candidates to spend as much as 90 percent of their TV advertising budgets on abortion, a topic that has driven tens of thousands of Americans to register to vote since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.
And Democratic operatives involved in House races said that tests of Jan. 6-themed ads had produced underwhelming results compared with other messages, such as moves by Congress to reduce the prices of prescription drugs.
A yearlong research project spearheaded by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the political arm of the liberal think tank, has found that labeling Republican candidates as “MAGA Republicans” is a turnoff for swing voters, even with Mr. Trump not on the ballot this year. The research has been widely disseminated to campaigns and strategists at the White House, on Capitol Hill and within Democratic Party committees.
But Democrats familiar with the “MAGA Republicans” research said that using the label was not as simple as running ads associating Republican candidates with Mr. Trump and events like the Capitol riot. Rather, they said, the research was part of a framework they built that allows Democrats to paint the Republican Party as extreme on an array of issues that are more pressing on voters’ minds.
What does seem to change some votes, according to different research conducted by Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, are messages that accuse Republican politicians of “wanting to take away your freedoms” or “take away your voice.”
By framing their attack lines that way, Ms. Lake said, Democratic candidates can try to link Republican candidates to extremism more broadly, while pivoting to an issue that is proving to be highly salient: abortion.
“I think we’re not using Jan. 6 enough, to be quite frank with you,” Ms. Lake said. “But the whole bucket is really strong, and people can pick and choose from it.”
Ms. Lake said she expected that Democrats would be discussing the topic more frequently in the final weeks of the campaign, because Jan. 6 is a motivating topic for the base of the Democratic Party.
“It’s a huge get-out-the-vote issue for our people,” she said.
Source: nytimes.com
