Chris Hayes ("All In With Chris Hayes" MBNBC) showed the latest data from Real Clear Politics averages correlating national poll standing and amount of money spent on TV ads by Republican candidates. It's very interesting in that, with the exception of Chris Christie ($8.6 million/4.6%), there is an inverse correlation between amount spent and poll ratings among some of the other leading candidates.
Amount spent/Poll standing/Candidate:
$ 0.2 million 35.6% Trump
$ 1.4 million 18.6% Cruz
$ 20.5 million 11.6% Rubio
$ 46.1 million 4.4% Bush
Now, does this really mean that the more you spend, the lower your ratings? Or is it that those who are low in polling decide to spend more on ads? Obviously Donald Trump is an outlier exception to all the rules. He knows how to play the media to get free air time, worth more than all Bush's ads. And Bush has nothing much going for him but money.
So I don't think we can draw any firm conclusions . . . yet. But at least it does seem that tv ads don't have the effect they used to. Maybe we're reaching that saturation point where people just tune them out.
Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to wait for SCOTUS to overturn Citizens United -- and it just died because money no longer worked to buy elections. That's one of my new year's wishes.
Ralph
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