Harris and Trump are making the final push in battleground states ahead of the 2024 election

We’ve all seen it lot of recent political ads. But in the struggling states, it’s a tsunami. Jack Levis is an independent voter in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which makes him one of the most desirable voters on the planet: “Emails, texts, phone calls, they’re in my news feed, they’re on social media. In the last two days, I counted, we had 30 spam emails out there about the election,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Not to mention TV and radio commercials. “Come on, it’s everywhere!” he laughed. “Are you kidding me? Ads after ads!”

Erica Franklin Fowler, co-director of The Wesleyan Media Projectwho follows the advertising campaign and co-author of “Political Advertising in the United States”, he says he actually likes watching political ads. But, she adds, “First I will apologize to all the residents of the battleground states, because I feel their pain.”

Asked if political ads really persuade anyone, Fowler said, “Political ads don’t have the kind of massive influence that citizens sometimes think they do. Political advertising really only matters at the fringes. That doesn’t mean margin doesn’t matter. right? The margin in this competitive election cycle will be the difference between getting to the White House and not.”

And what about negative versus positive messages? “There’s no question that negativity is more memorable,” she said. “It’s more emotionally provoking.”

We might hate those attack ads, but Fowler says the positive ones aren’t saying much. “Citizens hate negativity,” Fowler said. “Negative ads tend to be more policy-based, more issue-focused, and those details are actually very important to citizens who otherwise don’t pay much attention to politics.”

Once upon a time, we all saw the same commercials. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” ad implied that his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would start a nuclear war; and in 1988, George W. Bush’s infamous “Willie Horton” ad made his opponent, Michael Dukakis, look dangerously soft on crime.

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