District Profile District:


Democratic Incumbent: Republican Challenger: Cook PVI Rating:


Barack Obama 2008 Vote:


2008 Election Result Castor (D) Adams (R)


2010 Election Result Castor (D)


Prendergast (R)


Campaign Committee Spending Castor (D)


Prendergast (R) Independent Expenditure Spending


FL-11 Kathy Castor


Mike Prendergast D+11 66%


71% 29%


60% 40%


$357,492 $496,080 None


in any other medium (TV, radio, mail, etc.) while the test was being conducted and b) was being targeted at the op- ponent and designed to decrease the opponents’ favor- able rating and increase the opponent’s unfavorable rat- ing. We chose negative messaging because, in other forms of voter contact, negative messaging about the opponent penetrates more quickly and effectively than positive mes- saging about the candidate. We assumed the same would hold for digital ads.


The message the campaign chose was one of wasteful spending.


Specifically, Castor voted for a program that


would spend $71,000 to study the effects of cocaine on monkeys. In a baseline poll of CD 11 voters, this message made 49% of all voters less likely to vote for Kathy Castor, and 80% of Republican men less likely to vote for Kathy Castor. The creative for the ads featured the phrase “Does your monkey need rehab?”


2010 election. Finally, we conducted a post-election survey (n=400) on November 3rd


and 4th , 2010. In compliance with FEC regulations, the results of the


poll were not shared with the campaign prior to Election Day. We wanted to test changes in at least four areas: 1) change in awareness of Internet advertising 2) change in favorability ratings among those who had seen the ads 3) change in voting behavior among those who had seen the ads and 4) effectiveness of “burning in” a message. Although we tested awareness of Internet advertising by


asking respondents directly, this is among the least impor- tant of the data we are measuring. The typical cycle of negative political advertising (inde- pendent of media) is as follows:


1) voters receive negative information about Candidate A via a political advertisement by Candidate B


2) the voters’ opinions of both candidates decrease; Candidate A drops because of the negative infor- mation and Candidate B drops because most peo- ple don’t like people who say negative things about other people


3) voters forget the vehicle for the negative information about Candidate A and just remember the negative information


4) the voters’ opinion of Candidate B returns to around what it was prior to the delivery of the negative ad


5) the voters forget the negative information, and are just left with a negative impression of Candidate A.


The conclusions drawn by the authors’ decades of ex-


perience is backed up by academic studies. People rarely admit to being influenced by political ad-


vertising, yet campaign cycle after campaign cycle shows that political advertising moves numbers.


As such, the


We conducted a benchmark survey (n=400) on Oc- tober 24th


, 25th and 26th , 2010. The purpose of this survey


was to establish a baseline for voter opinions in the areas we would be testing. We conducted tracking polling (n=200 nightly) on Oc- tober 29th


, 30st and 31st in advance of the November 2,


most important data is the change in favorability, change in voting behavior, and amount to which the message was burned in. If poll respondents deny seeing an ad, but their opinions about a candidate have changed in a direction that corre- sponds with the message of the ad, we have to assume that the ad is effective and respondents are either deceiving the interviewer about the source of their opinions to make themselves look good, or the respondents simply have for- gotten the source of their opinion. Similarly, in our study, the final poll showed that the message was burned in among 22% of the campaign’s target audience, Republican men. That is to say, in the final poll, 22% of Republican men could recall the mes- sage, while only 17% of Republican men in the final poll reported having seen an Internet ad by either candidate. As stated previously, the online ad was the only media by which the very specific message “Does your monkey need rehab?” be received, yet thirty percent more Republican


April 2011 | Campaigns & Elections 33


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