Duration of Advertising Effects in 2000 Presidential Campaign (maybe why polls bounce around)

Consistent with the Johnston et al. account of Bush’s late surge in battleground states, we find advertising effects that are both fairly large in magnitude and short-lived. As in some other studies, we also find that low to middle information voters are most susceptible to these persuasion effects. In combination with other recent studies, our findings of short, sharp advertising effects must be taken seriously.

The decay effects uncovered by Gerber et al. are much more rapid than any previous scholar had assumed -- so much more rapid as to raise the question of how previous research has been able to find advertising effects with the longer lags it has used.

This may be responsible for what is happening in the scatter of the polls. Obama has such an (ill-gained) advantage in the number of ads he is able to run , that by the end of the night, he is getting a mini-bounce from it. Clearly the persuasion works but it is short term ( how do they sell all those time shares after all, and how many are cancelled the next day?). Supposedly there is going to be a GOP ad burst over the last 72 hours that will at least partly level the playing field, and perhaps the response will not decay at the voting booth.

Now , the question is, is there collusion by at least some of the polling organizations to poll heavily in areas where there are big Obama ad buys? There was a hint of some kind of media collusion, IMHO, at the end of the series game last night . The local FOX station (I don't know if the ads were locally broadcast or nationally) had a McCain commercial with the voice of Joe Biden "mark my words....blah blah blah." Within the same commercial break, there was an Obama ad on, I admit not having listened super attentively, but something about "selective " quotes, the voice of Biden "steel up his spine." Now how does that happen? Somebody had to have leaked the McCain ad to Obama.

My view has always been that for independents, it's what you hear last and in the last three days, hear most, that matters. Everything else until the last weekend is noise. This is apparently the McCain strategy.

It could well be that Obama has squandered more money per vote than any politician in history, save Mitt Romney. It might well go down as the most ineffective, most wasteful campaign ever.

This study is opionated garbage with no statistical rigor.

My contention is that late ads are useless. 95% or more have made up their minds and only hit the mute button when an opponents ad comes up.

Consistent with the Johnston et al. account of Bush’s late surge in battleground states, we find advertising effects that are both fairly large in magnitude and short-lived.

If this is accurate, the correct strategy with limited resources is to keep most of your powder dry until about 72 hours before the election, which is exactly what the McCain campaign has done.

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