This year’s slate of surprisingly competitive House special elections has put a spotlight on a running debate media strategists are having: what’s the best way to approach an ad strategy geared toward turning out early voters?
As early voting has gained popularity, fewer people are casting ballots when polls open on Election Day. Even candidates are voting early. In fact, instead of waiting until the 25th, Democratic House candidate Rob Quist voted absentee in Montana on May 2. It’s a popular practice: 45 percent of registered Montanans voted absentee in 2016.
Now, that puts campaigns under pressure to unleash their advertising earlier than ever. But the strategy behind early-vote advertising — particularly during the midterms — is still being charted.
Some media consultants are increasingly in tune with early voting and see it as a messaging window that can tilt the tide in close races. Consultants for outside groups, on the other hand, don’t feel the same attraction and say the focus will remain on saturating the final two weeks before Election Day. These contrasting approaches could give candidates heartburn as early voting continues to expand.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 37 states and the District of Columbia now have some form of early, no-excuse voting. That window can range from four days to around six weeks before Election Day.
Moreover, currently 22 of those states offer a vote-by-mail option, which can take place in the same window. In fact, Oregon, Washington and Colorado mail ballots to every voter, while California will begin holding all-mail elections in 2018, according the NCLS.
Voter participation is growing exponentially. To wit, the number of votes cast in the early window increased by more than 45 percent between 2012 and 2016, according to a University of Florida researcher. That number will likely continue to grow as voters become accustomed to casting their ballots free of the long lines on Election Day.
Despite the popularity of early voting, some practitioners are concerned with targeting a big ad buy to that window. That’s because any resources used to go up early, when airtime and even digital inventory can be cheaper, can leave a campaign short-changed during the final stretch when they may face some tough hits their opponents saved for the stretch.
Despite that concern, Democratic media consultant John Rowley said the value of going up in the early-vote window outweighs any safety concerns.
Early voting, according to Rowley, “is dramatically changing the timing [for media buys], and how you’re communicating in the last four-five days.”
“It definitely front loads your creative process — you shoot early, produce early,” he said. “Early communications are a little more positive, unless you’re on the attack dog, IE side of things.”
Rowley is in the school of consultants who worry that voters are increasingly immune to campaign messages because they’re over saturated with advertising. That’s especially true, he argues, during the late stages of a campaign.
Rowley, who calls his strategy “bending the media curve,” pointed to a race for vice mayor that he worked recently where his client turned an 8-point deficit into an 8-point win by going up in the early voting window.
“You can have some dramatic movement if you have the airways to yourself,” he said. “There’s a little bit of science and then there’s a little bit of gut. I don’t think media consultants have really caught on.”
It’s about being nimble, he explained. “You may be ramping down in the last week or two.”
GOP media consultant Casey Phillips is another practitioner who likes targeting the early vote window. “I’m a big believer in advertising to people who are about to vote,” he said. “You’re leaving votes on the table if you’re not advertising before the early vote window.”
Specifically, Phillips sees the benefit of going up in the early vote window in targeted congressional races because so much money pours in late. He pointed to last cycle, when he worked for now-Rep. Don Bacon (R) in Nebraska’s second district. “People kept buying because it was a competitive race and they wanted to affect the outcome,” he said. “Some group of chiropractors were buying ads.”
In that environment, Phillips argued a candidate will see a limited return on TV ad spending closer to Election Day. "People in Omaha, I think they were scared to turn on their TVs in the last week."
But going up early isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, Phillips said. If voters “are motivated to vote for governor, but you’re working for the secretary of state, by God, you better be up there” at the end of the race,” he said. “You better be telling your story.”
When it comes to applying an early-window advertising strategy to the midterms, the first round of voting in the Georgia special election last month provides an instructive case study.
For instance, on the first day of the early-vote window in Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties March 27, Democrat Jon Ossoff’s House campaign released ads highlighting the backing of Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). “I’ve known Jon Ossoff for many years,” Lewis says in one version. “I know he will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
Post-April 18 Election Day, analysts determined that Ossoff won 77 percent of mail-in ballots and 62 percent of in-person absentee votes. Meanwhile, 75 percent of the vote was cast on Election Day, and the GOP won 58 percent of those April 18 ballots.
On the Republican side, Karen Handel, who advanced to the June 20th runoff against Ossoff, didn’t release her first TV ad until March 30. Liesl Hickey, a GOP consultant who works with House campaigns, doesn’t see much wrong with that.
“You saw this in Georgia six, some of the early returns were very frightening. But a lot of times Republicans do vote on Election Day, especially in midterms,” said Hickey.
That’s part of the reason why GOP media buyer Paul Winn wants his clients to be up closer to Election Day.
Winn, who left his position as COO of Smart Media Group to head Del Cielo Media, the company’s firewalled new venture focusing on PACs, said that traditional strategy is tailored to the operations of his clients.
He noted that PACs fundraise with the goal of sustaining a message in the final stretch of a campaign. "A lot of it has to do with the fundraising and when they’re getting the money, he said. “They want to be able to sustain their message.”
PACs are often the cavalry who arrive late to a race that’s gotten competitive last minute, such as North Carolina in 2016, Winn said.
In that scenario, when the hits are coming hard and fast down the stretch, Winn said consultants would have an angry client on their hands if the candidate isn’t able to respond. "That’s a tough place to be, when you’re seeing twice as many ads against you as the opponent,” he said.
Winn noted that a negative ad can be a knockout blow if aired in the final stretch as opposed to giving the opponent time to respond, if the ad is aired earlier in the cycle.
He cited former Rep. Allen West’s 2012 TV ad “Ashamed,” which the Republican ran against Democrat Patrick Murphy. The hit went up just before the early-vote window opened in Florida, but roughly three weeks ahead of November’s Election Day. That gave Murphy, who unseated West by less than 1-percent of the vote, enough time to respond, according to Winn.
He added: “The last thing you want to do if you have a good hit on somebody is run that message, have them respond, and then not be able to come back."
The cost of air time can also be a factor for when PACs go up. Winn pointed to the difference in price between the two House special elections in Montana and Georgia’s 6th district. If a group has the option of sustaining a longer message, it might take it, but the priority would be not to go up, come down and then go back up again. "There’s a lot more factors that go into this than just the early voting,” said Winn.
There’s also a question of what channel to advertise to voters, if groups or candidates do decide to go up early. While consultants say there isn’t hard data on what the early-vote electorate looks like, one factor to consider with early voting is the potential of setting the agenda. Here’s where digital consultants make the pitch for their expertise.
“On the Portman [Senate] campaign last year, we saw a 600-percent increase in search related to the opioid issue in the state after the campaign ran display advertisements to a segment of the population around the topic,” said GOP digital consultant Vincent Harris. “Agenda-setting and narrative-setting can be done by a campaign at any time of the cycle.”
He noted another advantage of going up early: list and advertising suppression.
“Persuasion messaging buys, as opposed to say, digital fundraising or lead generation, are often scheduled in correlation with early voting windows according to each race's election schedule,” Harris said. “This often involved campaigns updating suppression lists as voters vote during early voting or mail in ballots, in order to ensure they are not continued to be advertised to.”