Both campaigns spent millions on TV ads—with very different messages

Voters got no break from the presidential campaign in October, new data from advertising intelligence firm AdImpact shows. The Trump and Harris campaigns spent a record $529 million on television advertising in October, which included purchasing nearly all of the commercial airtime in crucial swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

October’s tidal wave of ad spending also shows a race where Republican messaging still defines public perception—even among the Democratic insiders behind some of the campaign’s most effective messaging. That’s creating unexpected headaches for Harris in Arizona and Nevada, where the campaign has spent months courting Hispanic voters once considered safe Democratic votes.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Republicans’ top issue by total spending: immigration. Over half of every Republican ad dollar spent in October went to reinforce the Trump campaign’s apocalyptic view of immigration policy. Those ads also explicitly linked immigrants to crime, despite nonpartisan research showing that crime rates are actually lower among immigrants than they are among natural-born Americans. Combined, immigration and crime ads made up 95% of all Republican ad spending, AdImpact showed.

Raising fears about immigration has “been their strategy all along,” says Republican political consultant and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid. “The goal is to scare white women into forgetting the Dobbs decision overturning abortion. It doesn’t appear to be working.”

Immigration remains one of the few areas where most Americans disagree with the Biden administration, and as a result it’s become an almost invisible issue among Democrats on the campaign trail. Harris has avoided immigration since the final presidential debate, and candidates up and down the ticket have likewise avoided the topic entirely. Immigration also ranked dead last in Democrats’ October ad spending, accounting for less than 1% of the party’s total spend, as shown by the AdImpact numbers

Where those ads are appearing tells the story of a race that will be decided by small clusters of voters spread across seven swing states. Nowhere has been inundated with more television advertising than Pittsburgh, where the average TV viewer has seen over 2,300 ads since the beginning of the campaign. According to Bloomberg, political campaigns have purchased so much advertising airtime that “local businesses, the personal injury lawyers, car dealers and furniture stores … often can’t reserve any airtime even if they could afford the inflated rates.”

Pittsburgh holds a special appeal for both Trump and Harris. The area has shifted toward Democrats since 2012, and contains large populations of Black and Hispanic voters both campaigns are seeking to realign. It’s also a part of Pennsylvania that has struggled with both the pandemic and the loss of heavy industrial jobs. 

Some Democratic-leaning labor union members there cite immigration as one reason they’re still split between Harris and Trump. In other words, Pittsburgh looks a lot like a scaled-down version of both parties’ ad spending. 

If that’s the case, it’s bad news for Trump, who has seen his edge in Pittsburgh (and Pennsylvania more broadly) slip away over the past month. Trump once led Biden by three points in the Keystone State. The final New York Times/Siena poll of the campaign cycle released over the weekend now shows him tied with Harris. The Muhlenberg College poll released last week has Trump losing the state by 2 points. a

Instead of being moved by immigration and fears of rising crime, as Republicans hoped, Pennsylvania voters are casting their ballots on two of the GOP’s weakest issues: abortion and the economy. Last month, Democrats invested $38 million in ads highlighting Trump’s threat to reproductive freedom. By contrast, Republicans didn’t spend a single dime talking about abortion, for the very good reason that the GOP’s position is toxic to even conservative-aligned voters. 

Don’t expect Republicans to see those polls and suddenly realize they’re wrong. “That’s not how it works,” Madrid warns. “If it did they would’ve made adjustments years ago.”

Abortion messaging also seems to be working for Democrats deeper in the Midwest. The respected Des Moines Register poll released over the weekend shocked the media by giving Harris a 3-point lead in Iowa, a state Trump previously led by 18 points over President Joe Biden. One of the big drivers of that shift was Iowa’s decision to enact a six-week abortion ban back in July despite majorities of Iowan voters opposing a ban. 

Democrats spent the summer and fall blanketing Iowa in television ads championing reproductive freedom. That drove down the GOP’s popular lead in every single poll conducted through September, according to MSNBC polling wizard Steve Kornacki. By the end of September, Trump had fallen from +18 to just +4. A month later, Harris took the lead, bolstered by a massive upsurge in support from women. If those numbers are remotely accurate, Republicans are in deep trouble on Tuesday.

Trump and his band of media spin masters spent almost all of their money on advertising designed to frighten and divide voters.Their ads are almost universally negative, with promises of carnage, crime, and chaos if Harris and the Democrats hold the White House on Nov. 5. They paint a terrifying picture of immigrants running rampant in major cities, skyrocketing crime rates, a tanking economy, and the end of America as we know it. Fortunately for our republic, most voters don’t seem to be buying the doom and gloom on offer from Trump’s nightmare-inducing campaign. 

Voters are instead casting their ballots based on the reproductive freedoms they have already lost—and which they blame Trump and Republicans for by massive margins. Democrats’ silence on immigration policy now seems like a politically shrewd move by Harris, though one that still carries high risks in must-win states like Wisconsin. 

If the 2024 presidential race ends up being defined by women’s outrage over abortion bans instead of fears about Trump’s alleged foreign invasions, Harris will emerge from the campaign looking like a masterful political operator. She’ll also be president, to the relief of tens of millions of Americans and friends of democracy around the world.

As the 2024 campaign enters its final full day, both camps are hoping their deluge of ad spending broke through to the dwindling number of undecided voters.Those voters will have the chance to render a verdict on whose vision of America they want to live in for the next four years. The ramifications of that choice will echo for generations.