Seventy-two days.
That’s 1,152 waking hours for all the candidates in all the races to spend what AdImpact expects to cumulatively top move than $10 billion in political pitches across all kinds of media platforms.
Since I’m a numbers guy, that’s $10,000,000,000. Let’s say that again for effect – TEN BILLION DOLLARS. Divide it by 1,152 and that’s a spend rate of $8,680,555 per hour, for each one of those waking hours. Waking hours count because advertising when most of your audience is sleeping is futile.
I have a retired friend who ran a remarkable NBC affiliated television station. Our running joke has been, “How’s business?” And his response, depending on what year, has been “no election, no Olympics, you tell me.”
This is not one of those years.
Elections are the financial lifeblood of many of our legacy media outlets.
I know that many of the employees at those television and radio stations, newspapers and internet outlets will benefit from the largess of our political campaigns. Without the campaign cash, some of them would cease to exist in this time of a rapidly changing media landscape.
So, our senses will be assailed with ads full of the smiling faces of our candidate, telling us how great it’s going to be, motivating YOU to get out and vote.
Telling us how the election of THEIR candidate is going to destroy our “Democracy” (we have a Constitutional Republic, which will be the subject of another rant in this column). Again, motivating you to get out and vote.
Media pushing the point that the other candidate has one eye in the middle of their forehead, is rude, crude, socially unacceptable, and has to be driven onstage by a handler with a chair and bullwhip. Again, to get out the vote.
The point of all of this is not to change opinions. It’s about getting out the vote. It’s about sufficiently motivating voters pre-disposed to your candidate to get out and pull the lever for your candidate.
None of this is changing opinions. It’s motivating “voters” to get out and vote. Pull the lever. Punch the chad. Smear the screen. Whatever happens in your voting booth, it’s about getting them out to get it done.
Elections today are 40-20-40 affairs, where 40% of the voters will pull the lever for “D” candidates, 40% will pull the lever for “R” candidates, and the independents will decide the election.
Many local elections have already been decided since they coincided with the primary.
Remember the primary, where each party chooses their candidate for the general election – and then the party elite installs their choice because the chosen candidate is obviously having cognitive events? I remember that.
So, November will be the deciding vote for State and Federal elections.
The state elections, and the election for our federal Senate and House, are in simple majority events within the confines of a single state. Get one more vote than your opponent, and you win.
The election of the President of the United States is through the Electoral College.
That great equalizer that allows your voice be heard in Washington, because for if it were not for the Electoral College, our voices in West Virginia would be squelched by all the big cities. It was established at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, not because of constitutional theory or far sighted design, but because all other alternatives had been rejected.
I contend that it’s brilliant.
It has worked well as a balance. Critics will mention that we have had a number of presidents elected who had fewer total votes their opponents. Of course, those critics favor the candidate who lost, and are remarkably quiet when their candidate prevails.
Two hundred and seventy electoral votes are required to become President of the United States of America. Most of the pundits will tell you Trump/Vance has about 219. Harris/Walz 208, with 111 toss ups from states including Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire.
Because of this, national polls are completely pointless. They don’t matter. What matters is what drives electoral votes. There is no single metric that I know of that can accurately describe what’s going on in those wildly different “toss up” states.
West Virginia, a state with a storied past in Democrat politics, is so solidly Republican when it comes to electing the commander in chief that it’s not questioned. So solidly Republican, that a few votes for president here or there won’t make any difference.
All four of our electoral votes will go for Trump/Vance. Without question.
So, who knows, maybe I’ll write in Baby Dog for President?
Seventy-two days until the election, and $10 billion dollars. If you take the total and divide it by the 270 electoral votes, that $37 million dollars each. That number is a little disingenuous. The real number still borders on obscene.
Still, a process that spends $400 advertising directed to every person of voting age within our borders and continues to produce what many consider to be awful results is either brilliant or insanity. You be the judge.
The outcome will affect every one of us, and will set the stage for the future. Yet only slightly more than half of us can be bothered to vote.
Baby Dog is looking better and better.
