On TV, it seems like it’s all Obama, all the time

TV ads work, especially negative ones
The reason is that TV ads works — especially negative ads, however much voters may say they dislike them.

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame found that during the 2004 presidential election, 14 percent of voters said they changed their minds about their favored candidate after watching negative ads.

“Negative advertising, in spite of the fact that we don’t like it, still can shift opinion,” said Joe Urbany, a marketing professor who led the research team.

“The negative is attention-getting. It tends to generate more argumentation and counter argumentation," Urbany said. “Again, people don’t like it as much, but they’re thinking about it.”

Moreover, said Dan Jones of Dan Jones & Associates, a political polling firm in Utah, “people have an easier time remembering something negative about a particular candidate rather than an issue.”

That’s why, beginning Thursday, the National Republican Congressional Committee will begin spending $84,000 over five days in Pittsburgh on attack ads in behalf of William Russell, the Republican opponent to Democratic Rep. John Murtha. The ads include clips of Murtha using the words “redneck” and “racist” to describe some Pennsylvanians.

In Georgia, meanwhile, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss is facing his own negative assault from Democrat Jim Martin. For Chambliss, the position is a turnabout — six years ago, he unseated Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, a decorated veteran who was left a paraplegic by injuries he suffered in the Vietnam War, by airing ads that questioned Cleland’s patriotism.

‘Don’t believe everything you hear’
Bob Botsch, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina-Aiken who has tracked political ads for more than 30 years, said ads like those preyed on uninformed voters, who he said should not take them at face value.

In one recent ad, the Obama campaign accused McCain of opposing “stem cell research.” But McCain not only has long supported stem cell research; he even broke with his party in 2001 in support of more controversial research on embryonic stem cells. What the Obama campaign spotlighted was the position of the Republican platform — which McCain disagrees with.

“If you look at the Republican platform, it is a much more radical position against stem cell research,” Botsch said. “I think that’s what the Obama people are seizing on.”

Likewise, Botsch said, a recent McCain ad twisted Obama’s position when it claimed that “Senator Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes.”

“The tax thing is pretty much taking votes out of context and making it look like a vote for a tax increase, when, in fact, it may have been a vote to not continue a tax decrease or a vote that was one part of what may be a more complicated package later,” Botsch said.

John Frank, a political analyst in Eau Claire, Wis., said there was a clear lesson for voters:

“Don’t believe everything you hear in a 30-second commercial, whether it’s a politician or a new chair for your living room.”

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