Democratic candidates have been raising money at an extraordinary pace this year, and NBC has now given us a look at just what that means in terms of the ad war. In the 26 congressional districts that were most saturated by TV commercials from Sept. 1-Oct. 25, Democratic candidates and allied groups outspent the Republicans 55 percent to 45. But the real advantage was twice as large, because Team Blue was able to run 60 percent of the TV spots, a concept known as “share of voice.”
The reason Democrats are punching above their weight like this is because Republicans haven't benefited from anything like the grassroots fundraising explosion that has aided Democrats, so they're more dependent on super PACs to help them get their message out. But even if these PACs have helped Republicans close the financial gap, not all dollars are created equal.
Why? If a campaign spends $1 million on TV or radio ads, that money will go much further than the same amount spent by an outside group because, under FCC rules, federal candidates are entitled to what's known as the "lowest unit rate," or the cheapest available ad rates a station can offer. By contrast, super PACs (and state candidates) have to pay full freight. This year, that's giving Democrats running for the House more bang for their buck when they purchase ad time, since a larger share of buys on the Democratic side have come from campaigns.
All of these campaign commercials are also increasing the cost of ads, and that means it will keep costing more and more to buy ads until we hit Nov. 6. Campaigns and outside groups often will reserve ad time months ahead of Election Day while TV time is still relatively cheap, but super PACs can't anticipate every battleground that far in advance.
In the last few days, we’ve seen both Democratic and Republican super PACs start advertising in new contests in GOP-held House seats that look much more competitive than they did even a few weeks ago. However, because they're purchasing these ads so late in the game, these super PACs will need to pay more to run the same numbers of ads than they'd have paid if they'd booked time months ago.
Campaigns and outside groups that purchase ad time late may also discover to their horror that there just isn't much time left to purchase anymore. The Star Tribune recently reported that in Minnesota, which is home to multiple competitive congressional races, candidates are struggling to find places that still have inventory available, but even websites like Pandora are already full up. It's a good bet that lots of other candidates and groups all over the nation are struggling to find ad space in an oversaturated environment.
All that means that candidates who didn't reserve sufficient ad time may be left out in the cold now. We saw this happen in Alaska's race for governor in 2014, and it probably played a big role in GOP incumbent Sean Parnell's narrow loss. Both Democrats and Republicans correctly anticipated an expensive U.S. Senate contest in the Last Frontier between Democratic incumbent Mark Begich and GOP rival Dan Sullivan and bought ad time accordingly, but Parnell looked secure until his race dramatically changed in early September when Democratic nominee Byron Mallott dropped out and became independent Bill Walker's running mate.
Parnell's campaign eventually began to ready commercials for this suddenly competitive contest, but because both Senate candidates and their allies had already purchased so much ad time, there weren't many places left for Parnell to do so. In mid-October of that year, National Journal reported that, while around 51,000 TV ads had aired in the Senate contest on state broadcast TV, only 1,300 had aired in the gubernatorial race. To make matters worse for Parnell, only 170 of those ads were his. Parnell ran a hard-hitting commercial against Walker but could only air it in the Juneau media market, where just 12 percent of the state lived.
Begich narrowly lost his Senate seat that year, but Parnell also went down in a close contest; had Parnell planned ahead, there's a very good chance he'd still be governor now. It's a good reminder that, while outside groups are still finalizing their ad buys for the final days of the 2018 campaign, there may just not be enough airtime left to buy.