Campaign Ads Concentrated in 14 Key States
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON – Television advertising by President Bush and Senator Kerry and their political parties is focused on 14 states, reflecting a shrunken battleground in the final month of the presidential campaign.
Mr. Bush’s campaign has scaled back its ads in Democratic-leaning Washington in recent weeks and it is pulling out of Missouri, where polls show the president leading, since Mr. Kerry and the Democratic Party are no longer on the air there. The Democrat, meanwhile, abandoned plans to return to the air this week in North Carolina, historically a Republican state.
Both sides are saturating airwaves in 14 other states, according to an Associated Press analysis of airtime bought over the past week by Mr. Bush and the Republican National Committee and Mr. Kerry and the Democratic National Committee.
The most ads are running in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. However, 10 other states – Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wisconsin – also are seeing heavy advertising.
Based on a review of the country’s 210 broadcast markets, an independent analysis found that the top 50 markets for political ads reach only 27% of the electorate. The analysis by Nielsen Monitor-Plus and the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project was released yesterday.
Political ads reach a national audience through cable TV, but the majority of candidate and party advertising in the presidential election has been on local television stations in competitive states.
Three weeks before the November 2 election, strategists in both camps are trying to determine where they must win to get the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House.
In spring and summer, Mr. Kerry’s campaign had advertised in local broadcast markets in 21 states. It spent millions trying to put GOP-leaning states like Virginia, Louisiana, Arizona, and Arkansas in play. The attempt failed and no ads are running in those states. The same goes for GOP-leaning North Carolina and Missouri.
At the same time, Mr. Bush’s campaign is pulling its ads in Missouri this week, and it is running a trickle of ads in Washington State.
