TV Congress 2024
The Way to Win post-cycle analysis of the paid media landscape
Methodology
As a part of Way to Win’s post-election research into the impact of election communications and strategies across the entire mulitracial, multigenerational and ideologically diverse Democratic coalition, this report focuses on paid media, and specifically on the messages, positioning and arguments that Democrats and Republicans deployed. This report is based on the AdImpact database of all video ad buys run on digital and broadcast channels, including buys from campaigns and outside groups, c4 political and superpacs. All the reports used for the analysis in this memo are available on this TV Congress site, which also includes the 2022 and 2020 reports:
https://waytowin.us/tvcongress/
Summary
As in 2022, in the 2024 cycle Democrats enjoyed a significant advantage in spending on TV and digital advertising. In 2024 they spent 8.1% more at the Presidential level. (In 2022 they spent 26% more at both the Congressional and Senate levels.) The 2024 totals at each level, and the top spending on issues (sorted by total spent on the issue) across all three levels combined are here:
Yet despite this significant advantage in spending overall (and near parity in the Senate), Democrats underperformed broadly. A condensed version of the theory of the case that much of the Democratic establishment has adopted is that this underperformance is due to the influence the left and issue groups have exerted over the party, resulting in Dems moving left on numerous issues and supposedly losing the center. The remedy for this, according to this narrative, is simple: Dems must ignore the groups and move right.
But suggesting Democratic underperformance is solely due to a supposed move left grossly oversimplifies reality. Many factors are driving this dynamic, but the largest is the multi-decade and many billions of dollars worth of cumulative advantage that Republicans and the right have in media and persuasion. This advantage was then compounded by decisions Dems made in the 2024 cycle.
The Biden and Harris campaigns made mistakes, but their margins for error are so tiny due to right wing investments in media that have created a core set of beliefs— i.e. that taxes and government are bad, that immigrants are responsible for crime rates, that Republicans are “better for the economy”—that are so broadly held by many Americans that many Democrats feel they can only respond defensively. As legendary Democratic consultant Will Robinson puts it, the range of responsive chords Republicans can strike in their ads is much more broad than those available to Democrats. The resonances from right wing stories go deeper and travel farther.
The political science literature, hard-fought experience and common sense agree: voters do not make decisions based on a linear mechanistic comparison of issue positions. They make decisions based on stories, emotions and narratives. Democrats have fallen prey to the same Quantitative Brain thinking that has led to numerous organizational and corporate disasters.
The core narrative of this cycle – which Way to Win has called the Big Lie of 2024— was that Democrats cared about various “other groups” rather than “ordinary Americans.” The anti-trans “Harris is for they/them” ad wasn’t effective because trans rights abruptly became the most salient issue for swing voters. It worked because it plugged into a larger narrative about Democrats being out of touch with the needs of most voters that Way to Win flagged as troubling starting in March of 2024—a core narrative that Democrats and those leading the campaign strategies never faced directly or effectively countered.
With all the focus on new and social media—from short form video to long form streaming, shows and podcasts—Democratic and and Dem-aligned outside paid media infrastructure is also lacking in efficacy despite spending advantages. Yes, broadcast still matters! These ads and the money spent on them serve as a much better proxy for what the parties (and independent groups) want the election to be about than, for example, party platforms. Broadcast ads often drive a disproportionate amount of earned media compared to the actual impact those ads have on their audience. Similarly, one of the ways that media bias operates is that positions taken by relatively powerless activists throughout the cycle (i.e. the use of inclusive terminology like Latinx) are ascribed to all Dems—incorrectly saddling them with positions they haven’t even taken. By looking at the actual content of the ads we can see that reactionary centrist-style arguments like “Dems need to stop saying Latinx to win” don’t hold up. In fact, zero ads on either side mentioned the term in 2024.
The 2024 outcomes and this data suggest Dems should give serious consideration to rethinking their approach to paid media, including research, targeting, segmentation and quality of persuasion. Parts of the Democratic family decision-making team have, like so many other DC establishments, become wired for conservative thinking. This screenshot from one of the most expensive ($4.7M) Senate ad in Ohio summarizes the problem succinctly:
We hope this report can serve as an inspiration and challenge for Democratic ad makers, strategists, consultants, candidates and organization leaders to consider and reevaluate their strategic assumptions on positioning and making effective electoral arguments in the MAGA era.
See below for more specific findings based on the reports. We strongly encourage interested parties to dig into the reports directly—and above all, watch the ads—to better understand the challenge here on a more immediate level.
Presidential Level Findings
Key Presidential Level Reports: Overview | By Keyword | Message Box of Top Creatives
Change, the Charlamagne narrative, and forest vs trees.
Way to Win started referring to the 2024 Big Lie, “Dems are for someone else, not you” story as the “Charlamagne Narrative,” after an interview with broadcaster Charlamagne Tha God in spring of 2024 at SXSW where it was first clearly described. On Tuesday Oct 8th, a month before the election, two things happened: a NYT/Siena poll was published that had Harris at 46%, Trump 43% on which candidate represented change, and another result that 60% said the system needs major changes, 25% percent minor changes, and 12% that it should be torn down entirely. (2% thought no changes were necessary). Also— that same day—was the Harris The View interview where when asked about what she would change from Biden, Harris said she couldn’t think of anything. On Oct 16th the first buy for the Trump Nothing Will Change ad started, which would eventually total $12.1M. The $13.5M buy for another ad that used the View clip, Insanity, started 10/23. Trump/MAGA saw she had a strength, saw an opening to attack on it, and pounced. The only Dem side ad with significant spending that attempted to establish a stronger big picture narrative was Two Different Visions, which had 7 buys for a total of $6.8M —and this ad’s spending ended in early October.
Harris and allies mounted no significant counterargument on trans attacks.
For presidential level ads coded with the issue “LGBTQ rights,” Republicans spent $59M, and Democrats spent $0. For presidential ads coded “trans sports,” Republicans spent $11.6M R and Democrats again spent $0.
Harris and allies mounted a minor counterargument on immigration, but with very different messages in English and Spanish.
Immigration was the #1 Republican issue across the presidential. They spent $234.2M to Harris and allies’ $8.5M. The top Harris ad on this issue was titled “Tougher.” The total spend on it was just $4.2M. It was not a remotely moderate message; it’s impossible to characterize it as anything other than very right wing. The Harris campaign and Future Forward in partnership with Somos Votantes ran a series of much more balanced contrast ads, but solely in Spanish: Luchará Por Nosotros, Reforma Migratoria, Un Mejor Futuro, Es Muy Claro and Agentes Fronterizos.
Questions about Harris’s economic approach.
There was an overwhelming focus on the phrase “middle class.” It was the keyword with the most spending after the candidate names for Dems at $157.0M, while the top keyword for the presidential R side was “prices” at $128.9M. It was the top issue spending category for Dems at the presidential level, with nearly 3x as much spending as abortion. The ads with the biggest buys for these two keywords are indicative of this approach: the Harris camp’s Crazy ($14.4M total buy, a direct to camera ad featuring a senior citizen, focused on social security) vs the Trump ads Prices ($13.7M) and That’s Called Bidenomics. ($11.8M) Additionally, the Trump campaign made a strong counterargument to this at the end of Nothing Will Change ($12.8M total) with the line “only President Trump cut middle class taxes, and only President Trump will do it again.”
Harris and FF made massive bets on bipartisanship and focusing on Republicans.
The top spending Dem positive ad for Future Forward, at $43.6M, was called “For Regular People” and the script started with “I’m a lifelong Republican.” The 2nd most spent on ad, “Not Rich As Hell” ($26.2M) also featured a Republican former Trump voter. The Dem positive ad with the second biggest total buy, A New Way Forward at $13.7M, focused on bipartisanship and didn’t say much of anything about what the New Way Forward constituted in either principle or specifics other than “investing in you, the American people.” As has been reported elsewhere, outside Democrat-aligned groups ran zero purely negative ads on Trump, only delivering negative attacks via contrast ads. This decision was based on RCT results from early in the cycle and was never revisited or reevaluated. The Harris campaign negatives on Trump centered overwhelmingly on abortion, until the shift in mid October to also include attacks on Project 2025 and his threat to democracy.
Republicans relied on direct, vicious, incredibly dark character and immigration attacks.
Rs/Trump/MAGA spent almost as much ($373M) on ads with Kamala and/or Harris in the script as Harris/FF did ($405M). The top presidential R “contrast” ad (arguably miscategorized by AdImpact!) included lines like “Radical Kamala Harris created the border crisis…Innocent victims of Kamala’s open borders. They were bludgeoned, raped, strangled, stabbed, shot and murdered.” The Harris campaign and related groups attempts to ignore this issue while targeting Republicans for persuasion while these voters said this was their top issue seem to have failed completely. There were any number of different responses to this situation that could have been tried. Way to Win produced an ad in early October, Playbook, that tested strongly across segments and was one such approach. A stronger overall story—that immigrants commit crime at rates much lower than native-born Americans, and Trump and rich guys like Elon Musk are lying and trying to scare everyone because they want to keep taking all our money—could have been prosecuted by Harris. But nothing like this response was attempted.
Dems had more outside groups but concentrated spending more.
Future Forward and related entities controlled 87% of the $292.7M that issue groups spent on the presidential—72% directly, and through involvement in 5 of the 9 groups that spent over $1M, totalling to $254.8. Republicans spent less and had fewer groups, only 6 that spent over $1M. The biggest of them, MAGA, Inc. spent $151.8M, or $57% of the total outside funding.
vs:
Subjective observations, including on Dem ad style and production.
A number of observers have remarked that after sitting with them, the Republican and R-aligned ads just feel more persuasive and effective. The overall storytelling and narrative feels stronger, but even at the individual level the ads feel superior. The writing is frequently over the top and makes ridiculous claims, such a “Kamala single-handedly caused inflation or the border crisis,” but this seems to have not dented their efficacy. The “mellow storytelling” direct to camera approach that Dems use frequently was used far less frequently by the Right. People of color were more often integrated into Trump ads, rather than focused on specifically in a siloed approach. In a particularly cruel twist, many of the Trump ads relied on sound from Kamala. This was the inverted mirror image of the famously ineffective approach that the ‘16 Clinton campaign took that attempted to turn Trump’s words against him.
Senate and Congress Level Preliminary Findings
The Senate and Congress ad buys were not fully analyzed, but a few patterns stood out:
Senate: Republicans returned fire on abortion with “partial birth” attacks.
While Dems spent very heavily—$193.0M—on abortion, Rs were not silent in response, running $24.6M worth of ads focusing on support of late term abortions—using inflammatory, inaccurate “partial birth” language. They tied it to a narrative about Dems including immigration and support for trans health and immigrants, including an ad against Brown in OH that used the “he’s for they/them” line.
Senate: Overwhelming negative R ads, Dem ads also negative.
The ratio of negative to positive Republican Senate ads was $396.2M negative to $82.1M positive, or 4.8x. For Dems it was $290.4M negative to $152.1M positive, or 1.9x.
Meager Dem positive House message.
From looking at the Dem “positive” ads in the overall message box report, the “positive” messages were: abortion, stopping immigrants and blaming them for fentanyl, my opponent is corrupt/government doesn’t work, cheaper drugs, bipartisanship, and funding the police. A handful of ads mentioned gun safety, cutting middle class taxes, and protecting (but not expanding) benefits. Josh Riley (who flipped NY-19, Biden +4 Harris +2) ran what seems to be one of very few or perhaps the only Dem positive ad that talked about expanding benefits.
Appendix: Notable Ads
Republican Ads
Created a Crisis “They were bludgeoned, raped, strangled, stabbed, shot and murdered.” MI, $6.4M
Change a Thing “Kamala won't change a thing. So Americans will continue to lose their lives.” PA, $5.6M
Values “Kamala put her liberal values ahead of our safety.” PA, $5.6M
That’s Called Bidenomics “Bidenomics Bidenomics Bidenomics” PA $4.5M
Lied Kamala lies a lot GA $3.0M
American Workers “No taxes on… anything” also in Spanish: Un Hombre Cree En
Endorsed by Kennedy Jr MAHA Alliance, WI $197K
Comeback “Men could beat up women and win medals, but there was no prize for the guy who got up every day to do his job.” WI $73k 60s
Democratic Ads
Transition of Power PA, Local Voices 60s $18K
Different Visions $1.1M in PA (there were versions of this in multiple states)
About Your Wallet “taxing the streets to fund the elites” GA, FF, $3.3M
Luchara Por Nosotros
One of a handful of more positive immigration contrast ads from Harris. Translation of this script: “Kamala Harris and you have a lot in common. She’s the daughter of immigrant parents. Her mom came to the United States at 19 years old. Kamala understands the effort it takes to get ahead in this country. No one gave her anything. Donald Trump doesn’t understand. Everything was easy for him. Trump will fight for the rich like him. Kamala will fight for us. With Kamala we move forward. Vote Kamala Harris for President.”
Opportunity Covered prices with the “oppportunity economy” frame, HfP $11.0M total national buy
For Regular People $43.6M FF total buy. Similar approach: Not Rich as Hell $25.2M FF and another similar approach focusing on a Republican in Spanish, Reforma Migratoria ($1.1M, FF/Somos Votantes).