Were Bernie Sanders' Campaign Ads Effective? Professor McDaniel Comments

SLATE -- Was the Sanders campaign wise to invest so much in advertising? Travis Ridout, a professor of government and public policy at Washington State University who studies political media, said that Sanders “is a candidate for whom advertising might have actually been effective, first for introducing himself to a lot of people, and also for political donors to see all those ads on the air. That lent him quite a bit of viability.” But Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State University, told Slate: “We know that campaign ads tend to have minimal effects on persuasion and turnout. Whatever effect they do have is short term, fading away after several days at best. In the largest states, a campaign may not have the time and resources to build up an effective voter contact operation, so an ad blitz may make the most sense. But in many states, resources might be better used for canvassing or get-out-the-vote operations.”