Third Way: Voters' Price Tags
Yulia Naumenko / Hill Street Studios
The 2020 election is set to run a tab of about $5.2 billion, with $1 billion projected to be used for television advertisements alone. That record-shattering amount (beating 2008 by $2.4 billion) means that campaign ads are overflowing from every medium imaginable: television, social media, the mailbox, etc. At least this is true for some.
Campaigns will never have enough money to target every voter with the same intensity. They instead use an array of data to choose who gets shown more ads, and which ads they get shown. Once a campaign knows where to spend their money, they start investing in that area to try and buy votes. With more money comes a slew of advertisements.
The power of money in politics is not new. It can be traced back chiefly to the election of 1896, in which Republican President William McKinley raised $3.5 million in contributions from the titans of industry. The current rise of targeted, polarizing advertisements, and the corporate money behind them, however, is bigger in scale than McKinley’s pamphlets. While corporations are doing good by propelling Biden to victory, they, and campaign advertising more generally, need to be regulated.
The parallels of the upcoming election to the 1896 election are extensive. The 1896 election was preceded by the panic of 1893, which saw the worst economic crisis until the Great Depression in 1930. Unemployment reached roughly 17%, comparable with the unemployment rate of about 14% caused by Covid-19, our current panic. The panic of 1893 also came at the end of the American Gilded Age, a period marked by monopolistic trusts, corruption in government, and financial success marred by raging inequality.
Comparisons have already been made of the 21st century to the gilded age, with some referring to our era as the “second gilded age." As in the late 19th century, there has been income growth for the richest, and a yawning gap has separated them from the other classes. Anti-trust talk has precipitated around companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, tech giants who have the same global influence as nation-states. The government is the least trusted it has ever been, and the record number of lawmakers charged in the current administration shows why.
The similarities become even more concrete with regards to campaigning. The election of 1896 saw the first-time corporate America had a stake in the outcome. With the help of his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, McKinley was able to attract big business, particularly Cornelius Vanderbilt's railroad companies, giving him a huge funding lead over his opponent. Democratic Candidate William Jennings Bryan, on the other hand, garnered substantial grassroots donors, but only accrued $500,000 during his campaign across the country.
Like McKinley, Biden has been backed by billionaires and big business, with most of his donations coming in large sums instead of smaller donations. Trump is the opposite; the majority of his campaign funding, as of writing, comes from individual donations of less than $200. That accounts for a whopping $251,986,727, which is $51 million above Biden in small donations.
Source Of Funds, Biden
The election of 1896 gives some insight as to why corporations like Biden. The bimetallist Bryan was portrayed as bad for business by Mark Hanna, spurring corporations to donate to McKinley. Bryan was also branded as a "socialist" and viciously attacked for his economic policies, which were said to destabilize the economy.
Corporate America's support for Biden is in a similar vein. While it has been Trump labeling Biden as a "socialist," corporations understand that a Biden Presidency would bring stability. They also see him as a helpful partner when it comes to discussions of climate change and pandemic relief.
The volatility of stocks further proves this. With November 3 approaching, investors are concerned about post-election chaos, such as Trump refusing a peaceful transfer of power and a deluge of lawsuits about electoral votes. That anxiety has led to a rise in VIX futures, which are often traded as a form of insurance against volatility. Indeed, VIX futures prices are elevated from November 3 to Inauguration Day.
Furthermore, the VIX futures indicate a corporate lean towards Biden. With polls predicting a win for the former Vice-President, VIX futures prices are set to decrease after Inauguration Day. Having received more from big banks and other business investors, it seems clear that corporate America backs Biden.
Yet, corporate money in elections is questionable. The millions which the wealthiest use to nudge elections not only seem to be self-serving, but also disenfranchising. Voters may see the power of corporate America's leverage and find voting against Wall-Street to be a wasted ballot.
Even though corporate money supports Biden, its role in politics is not strictly beneficial. Not only will activist CEOs find themselves marketing hypocrisies if they advocate for idealism, but their influence in elections as individuals gives them far more power than a regular citizen. Their donations in support, after all, may come with strings attached. Corporations should have a tighter wallet when it comes to politics, even if their influence is not totally expunged from it.
Follow The Money
The campaigns of 1896 and 2020 are similar in more than monetary ways. William McKinley famously had a "front-porch campaign," which saw him give speeches to hundreds of thousands from his front door. Bryan visited 27 of the 45 states, speaking 20 to 30 times a day in different towns, and enthralling his audiences with his emotional rhetoric. Biden, like McKinley, has campaigned largely from his basement, making barely any in-person appearances. Trump, on the other hand, has gone around the country in an attempt to counter Biden's quiet campaigning.
Of course, there are key differences between then and now. With the assistance of data science and massive donations from super-PACs, modern campaigns have become more sophisticated, and more targeted. This "microtargeting" allows campaigns to build specific voter files from massive data collections and then show specific advertisements to targeted voters.
Not everyone who is targeted sees the same type of advertisement, obviously. At the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan research group, super-PAC funding is split into "for" and "against" columns. Thus making a distinction as to whether funds are being used for activities that support campaigns or are aimed at attacking opponents.
The usage of these funds, which are largely for advertisements, corresponds with the three main types of political advertisements. "Persuasion ads," "mobilization ads," and "demobilization ads." Mobilization advertisements encourage a party's base to go out and vote for the candidate. The more cynical demobilization advertisements are targeted against a candidates base. Their purpose is to make viewers so frustrated with politics as a whole that they simply do not vote.
Persuasions ads are targeted to the swing voters. With data collected including age, party affiliation, voting record, location, and even more specific details such as truck ownership and responses to door-to-door campaigners, they are some of the most targeted voters, and therefore the most expensive ones. This cycle the most money spent on a swing voter via television advertisements ($90 per voter) is in the small town of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania being a crucial swing state which Trump needs to win the election.
In swing states, campaigns can aim to have just over the required margin of voters to win the state, similar to the concepts of "cracking" in gerrymandering. If enough supporters are "packed" into districts that will almost certainly vote for one candidate, then it is more efficient to spend money winning by a slim margin in "cracked" districts. Campaigners, in effect, want to neutralize the other parties vote without spending an unnecessarily inefficient amount of money.
Though looking at just swing voters ignores the large-scale spending of campaigns. After all, the liberal super-PAC Priorities USA has spent 60% of its budget working against Trump, and the Lincoln Project devotes most of its massive funding haul on anti-Trump demobilization advertisements. Deciding who is a "persuadable" voter is also a major political challenge, meaning that spending more on mobilization ads, and targeting a well-known base, guarantees better results for the price.
This is why, according to NPR, Wausau, Wisconsin is where the most expensive voter lives. Citizens of that town have been bombarded constantly with advertisements. The advertisements they see re-enforce their partisan leanings, resulting not in voter shifts from the margins, but bitter polarization. Packing of voters like this may win districts, but the human cost is not worth the price.
Following McKinley's election and the Gilded Age's end, "muckrakers" emerged as a driving force in American politics. A progressive era emerged under Theodore Roosevelt, which saw the institution of anti-trust laws and purging of (some) corruption. Arguments exist claiming the “solutions” to the Gilded Age only made matters worse, claiming that what we need now is neither a second progressive era nor second new deal. History indicates otherwise.
Regardless, the successes of the progressive era and new deal are already serving as roadmaps for a Biden presidency. Biden has touted an ambitious stimulus plan for his presidency, with funding going into green-infrastructure, pandemic relief, and government research and development. As millennials fill political ranks, the progressive era may be born again.
Yet what both Biden and, even more likely, the progressives will do is create laws limiting advertising in elections, as well as limits on the role of super-PACs and their corporate ties. This is good. Limits on political advertising will curb the problems of polarization and misinformation caused by ads on social media. They may also work to give the people more purchasing power with their vote, encouraging more respect for politicians and grass-roots funding from the people themselves.
Recall, however, that it is this grass-roots funding that is propelling Trump's re-election campaign. Perhaps it is wise to invoke Saint Augustine here: "Lord, limit corporate donations, but not yet." After all, Biden may ride a green wave of corporate cash into the oval office.
