Your Humble Blogger was thinking this morning, whilst perusing the aftermath of the debate between the candidates for Democratic nomination for Senator here in my home state, that we might just be getting near the point where television ads are not very cost-effective in primary campaigns. Or we might not. It’s hard to tell.\n
I’m guessing that most people who are really interested in politics vote in the primaries. I’m also guessing that most people who are really interested in politics have found the internet a congenial medium for that interest. I’m extrapolating from my own experience, of course, which is always dangerous, and I’m aware that the existence of millions of primary-voting activists who don’t<\/I> spend an hour a day on the internet would not leave much of a visible mark, but that’s my guess. At least, I’m thinking that a pretty big percentage of primary voters will, at some point, voluntarily get some information about the candidates off the web.\n
And I think that it’s got to be fairly cheap to run a decent web site. At least compared to an ad buy on television. And, of course, in these Tivotic days, it’s not clear that the ad buy is reaching primary voters at all. I think most primary voters who watch candidate ads on television do so voluntarily. That is, I will sometimes refrain from changing over to Good Eats during a commercial break so I can see the latest campaign ad. But then, most people who would do that would, I’m guessing, watch the ad off the candidate’s website. Which may make the cost of actually running the add mostly waste.\n
The reason I’m wondering this is that (I think) a good deal of the cost of campaigns is television advertising, and if (as I also think) the financial bar for entry into a campaign is too high, busting the television market may do more to lower it than any public-finance law or campaign-contribution regulation. If we get to the point where a local town mayor or state assemblyman can run a reasonably high-profile challenge for a US Congress seat without having to buy television time, then there will be a lot more available challengers, I would think.\n
We’re not at that point yet. Even if television ads are too expensive for the recognition reward, it will take risk-averse candidates quite a little while to grasp that fact. And newspaper reporters, who are still (strangely) the ones who get to decide which candidates are real and which are fringe, will take much longer to abandon the TV-ad benchmark. I would be surprised if the percentage of campaign money spent on television time goes down more than a few percent in the 2006 cycle or the 2008 cycle. But we’re in this democracy business for the long haul, right?\n
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian. \n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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