May 13th, 2014

Let the Games Begin in North Carolina

Author

Ace Metrix

It’s officially on in North Carolina. It’s been on for some time, but now that the prospect of a runoff for Thom Tillis is out of the way, the candidates can start to attack each other in earnest (to wit, Senate Majority PAC dropped two ads on Monday).

We have put 14 ads in the field so far in this campaign, representing over 2,000 responses and covering almost 1,500 verbatim responses. Given how competitive this race is, the fact that we are six months away from election day and the fact that the Dems can leave no incumbent behind suggests that we truly are in the early innings of this contest.

Nevertheless, both sides have put forth some batters, but neither side has generated much offense from a creative effectiveness perspective – although the Republicans have generated more baserunners than the Democrats. Still, the score remains effectively tied at this point with voters, particularly those in the political center, seeing merits and/or flaws in both candidates.

As a quick reminder, Ace Metrix puts each ad in front of 150 North Carolinians who in turn rate the ad against a variety of metrics to determine an ad’s effectiveness. We target a sample of 40% Independents, 30% Democrat and 30% Republican. The current Ace Score norm for Senate races is 480. The current norm for the race in North Carolina is 452. Those norms are 90 days rolling.

Below is a list of the ads, ranked by Ace Score and filtered by those who responded that they were Independents, vote for more Republicans than Democrats or vote for more Democrats than Republicans. Those are the scores in purple. The scores in black are from all respondents, the general population.

              Independents/Moderates                                          General Population

Ace Metrix Political Ad Scores 2014

For those of you without a calculator, the average between the two lists is not material, Indepenents/Moderates score the ads ever so slightly better (461 vs. 458). Still, the highs are higher and the lows are lower for the Indy/Mod group. The order also changes between the lists.

Of the 14 ads, eight support Tillis and six support Senator Hagan. Again the difference is an indistinguishable 4 points.

But that is not the whole story.

The pro-Hagan/anti-Tillis ads were far more likely to impart new Information (Learning: +64 points) and to get respondents to want to find out more (Seek Information: +18 points) on the candidate. The ads were a blend of “feel good” Hagan spots and anti-Tillis spots that sought to frame the challenger in a negative light – and were moderately successful in doing do. These advantages that the Hagan camp enjoys on these dimensions is also a function of the fact that the anti-Hagan ads featured the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and there was minimal “new” information contained in the ads from a voter’s perspective.

On the other hand, the pro-Tillis/anti-Hagan ads outperformed on Agreement (+21 points), Credibility (+26 points) and Relevance (+34 points). Again, the differences can be traced to the message. Voters felt the ads talking about the ACA were credible and relevant, which, frankly, is in line with the polling on the subject.

We have seen a handful of ad types, thus far. We’ve seen pure attack ads, hybrid attack/candidate advocacy ads, policy ads (ACA primarily) and candidate advocacy ads.

In terms of Ace Score with the Indy/Mod group, we find that the policy ads perform best (517 vs. 461). These ads (there are three) all feature an issue and an appeal to reach out to Senator Hagan to address the matter. The issues include the ACA, mortgage industry reform and Medicare Advantage. The ads are not explicit attacks per se, but are effective at subtly tying Hagan to the issue at hand. This can be seen in the 300+ optional verbatims left by those who viewed these policy ads. The impact of the ads can be seen in the color of the responses. Green indicates the word is used among respondents who scored the ad higher. In this case, green tells us that the subtlety of the ad worked. Hagan is mentioned by 7% of the verbatim respondents and with high scores (625) suggesting respondents agreed with the content of the ads. While that is on display in individual verbatims so too are the skeptics.

 

The “hybrid” ads performed worst with Independents/Moderates, averaging 421, much lower than the 471 average for other political affiliations. These ads sought to hit the opponent and then lift up their candidate. They don’t succeed on either count. The “best” of the group comes from the Senate Majority PAC while Crossroad’s two efforts did not fare as well – although their candidate did avoid a runoff.

Straight advocacy and straight attack fared similarly (459 and 451 with the Independents/Moderates group).

Another fascinating angle to this race is how women are being courted. The 2012 cycle saw men score the vast majority of ads higher than women within the same ad, particularly when it came to Republican ads. But in this cycle, the opposite is true. Of the 14 ads, only three lead with men, and one of those was from the Democratic’s Senate Majority PAC. It will be interesting to see how this plays in the polling numbers as this race progresses.

We also looked at education and income as variables and didn’t see any explicit patterns save that those in our middle income bracket ($40K to $75K), which had a tendency to score ads higher than either of the other income groups. That income bracket led scoring in seven of the 14 ads, thus far; although they did not favor any particular party:

So what are the key takeaways?

  • First, the race is a dead heat from a television creative perspective. If there is any advantage to be gleaned from the data it favors Republicans, but that advantage is small.
  • Second, advertising that focuses on the ACA is effective in “setting the table” for Republicans for other issues. Voters believe that ads connecting Hagan with the ACA are credible, relevant and agreeable with many voters. On the other hand, those ads do not carry new information or cause voters to want to learn more about the issue.
  • Third, and somewhat related, is that Tillis can still be defined by his opponent. Ads that bring new information to the table about Tillis score well for team Hagan.
  • Fourth, while the Koch brothers may be the bogeyman on the left, they represent a two-part problem for Democrats. First, they have to introduce them to much of America, then they have to demonize them. That two-step process could prove expensive in multiple states. This problem is actually similar to the one experienced by Republicans in 2012 on Solyndra. While everyone in the beltway knew the narrative, no one outside of Washington had heard of it, making it a poor creative investment.
  • Fourth, women are being courted more effectively in this cycle by Republicans. This is a trend we are seeing in multiple states and expect to continue throughout the cycle.

As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for additional detail on any of the ads or to get a quick demo of our next generation interface (which allows for custom audience builds and dynamic data crosses). We are always happy to talk methodology too.

Check back on Louisiana data later this week.

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