Off-year elections heat up
The Labor Day weekend means campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia kick into high gear
Monday’s Labor Day holiday marks the real beginning for 2021’s major off-year election contests: New Jersey and Virginia’s gubernatorial elections. (We already wrote about you last week, California.) The campaign sprint from early September to Election Day is typically characterized by TV ad onslaughts and a steady ramping up of on-the-ground organizing and online advertising. This year’s no different - and although many of you may be taking today off for the long weekend, we thought we’d briefly share topline digital data and message trends from those two top-tier, off-year elections.
But first…
By the Numbers
Here are the top 10 political ads spenders on Facebook and Instagram last week:
The drug industry lobbying group PhRMA, has spent an unreal amount of money on digital advertising over the past three months (over $2 million!), in an attempt to derail a key part of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. In fact, we’ve calculated that, at least on Facebook, they’re the top spender this year against any one piece of the administration’s legislative agenda. Earlier this week, we took a deep dive into what ads they’re running, who they’re targeting, and why.
ExxonMobil has cranked up their digital spending on ads lobbying Congress too, dropping around $350,000 last week on Facebook alone. Many of their ads opaquely warn against coming “tax hikes” and claim that “1 million jobs are at risk.”
Tony Romm at the Washington Post recently wrote about how corporations like Exxon and others are launching a full-on advertising assault to gut the Democrats’ reconciliation bill that is working its way through Congress this month.
Meanwhile, on Google/YouTube, here were the top 10 spenders last week:
A longtime anti-immigrant group, deceptively named the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), has begun mobilizing their grassroots online against some Democrats’ plans to include pro-immigrant measures in the reconciliation bill. The fringe organization has spent $300,000 on Google and Youtube ads over the past month. Here’s what they’re running:
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Stop the Republican Recall campaign was again the largest political spender nationwide on Google & YouTube ads last week - by a lot. We’ve been closely monitoring that race and sharing our analysis for premium subscribers. We’ll have at least one more update on the site before September 14th’s Election Day, so make sure to upgrade your subscription + don’t miss out!
We can now count New Hampshire’s Sen. Maggie Hassan among the Democrats running Snapchat ads ahead of next year’s midterms with a pretty thoughtful strategy. They launched a two-track campaign on August 17th, so far spending $3,842 on ads that either target urban or rural Granite Staters. Both of these audiences, however, are receiving similar ads about Hassan’s commitment to veterans: “When it comes to delivering for veterans in New Hampshire, nobody’s been better than Senator Hassan.”
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Off-year elections kick into gear
The campaign sprint from Labor Day to Election Day is typically characterized by TV ad onslaughts and a steady ramping up of on-the-ground organizing and online advertising. This year’s no different - and although many of you may be taking today off for the long weekend, gubernatorial campaigns in New Jersey and Virginia most definitely aren’t, so we thought we’d briefly share topline data from those two major off-year elections.
New Jersey
The ugly stepchild of the 2021 off-year elections, political conventional wisdom tells us that the New Jersey Governor’s race shouldn’t even be close. Democratic Governor Phil Murphy is running for re-election in a state he won in 2017 by a 14-point margin, and his approval rating is currently hovering around 54%. Besides, under his watch, the state found its “big state energy” on Twitter.
That said, his current Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, is running a serious campaign and Murphy’s margin-of-victory could be an indicator of how Democratic and independent voters in certain swing NJ congressional districts could lean next year. Although online spending in the race is relatively minimal, Murphy is currently being outspent on Facebook and Google 2-to-1 by Ciattarelli.
Here’s Facebook + Google ad spending in the race year-to-date:
Murphy’s campaign has spent around $120,000 on Facebook and just $100 on Google, compared to $175,000 on Facebook and $185,000 on Google by his Republican opponent. Ciattarelli’s spending is more recent - ramping up his spending heavily over the past few weeks, and nearly 100% of his ad dollars are targeting voters in New Jersey, mostly with attack ads against the Governor. His two main message themes include (1) rising crime/law and order and (2) taxes.
Particularly the “Law and Order,” “anti-Police” line of attack against Murphy is one of Ciattarelli’s biggest narratives of the campaign - and we’ve seen it being used consistently by Republicans running across the country.
While Ciattarelli relies on conventional, dramatic attack videos to reach voters, Murphy’s Facebook ads have used “boosted” news to more subtly jab their Ciattarelli’s positions and highlight his own administration’s successes. Most of these recent ads from the governor’s campaign were overwhelmingly targeted at women in New Jersey.
Murphy’s most recent ads hit Ciattarelli for reckless anti-mask, anti-vax positions - a tactic we’re also seeing with Democrats in Virginia and elsewhere. And while Team Murphy is getting outspent on Facebook, and, as of this writing, isn’t currently running any ads on the platform, we can tell that they’ve got digital chops. They’re one of the few political campaigns we’ve seen that have a Messenger chat bot on their campaign website. Similarly, while they’ve yet to run any ads on Snapchat, they do have an organic presence there that outlines the governor’s positions on a variety of issues including education, working families, and LGBTQ+ rights.
As both campaigns ramp up their efforts in the next two months, we’ll expect Murphy’s digital efforts and campaign spending to increase dramatically.
Virginia
As readers of our FWIW Virginia newsletter are well aware, the statewide and legislative elections across the commonwealth are *becoming a thing.* Polls continue to show a close-ish race between popular former Governor Terry McAuliffe and billionaire private equity bro Glenn Youngkin. McAuliffe’s team isn’t taking anything for granted, and in terms of investment and innovation, they’re running a strong digital program.
Here’s YTD digital ad spending in that race, which we should note includes spending from both candidates’ competitive primary elections/nomination contests earlier this year:
By our latest count, McAuliffe has spent $1.15M on Facebook and $1.25M on Google ads, while Youngkin lags behind, spending $547,000 on Facebook and around $275,000 on Google.
Like Murphy, Team McAuliffe is also boosting news articles on Facebook to persuade voters to vote for him and not the other guy. They’ve created an entire branded page, called “The Download VA,” for promoting both mainstream and partisan news articles critical of Youngkin, and common lines of attack include Youngkin’s proximity to Trump, his career as a corrupt capitalist, and his inability to take on the COVID pandemic using measures like mask and vaccine mandates.
Unsurprisingly, Youngkin’s primary attacks on McAuliffe have been the same as Republicans in New Jersey and across the country - highlighting rising crime rates with law-and-order messaging.
Come November 2nd, both of these gubernatorial contests will reveal whether these two messaging bets - on crime and COVID protocols - have paid off for each party. Undoubtedly, we’ll see much more of both as the midterms come into focus and those campaigns kick into gear, too.
That’s it for FWIW this week! We hope you have a restful long weekend, and if you enjoyed reading today’s issue, why not share it on Twitter?