Ad blitz comes early in key states

Columbus, Ohio, the 34th-largest television market in the country, is ground zero in the 2004 ad wars.

WBNS-TV (Channel 10) in Columbus took its first order for a George Bush ad the day after the Super Tuesday primaries unofficially annointed Senator John F. Kerry as the Democratic nominee. The ads have rolled in over the past two months at a pace "the likes of which I've never really seen before," said general manager Tom Griesdorn.

"We're sort of a swing city in a swing state," said WCMH-TV (Channel 4) general manager Craig Robinson. And one media source projects that as much as $7 million may be spent on primary and general election spots in the Columbus area in the first half of 2004 alone.

Pundits like to separate the country into red and blue states, the colors used on maps to indicate which voted Republican and which Democratic, respectively, four years ago. But a sharper division might be between the residents of the 17 or 18 battleground states who are watching the battle of the airwaves and the rest of the nation that is, generally speaking, in the dark. Boston's WCVB-TV (Channel 5), for instance, has yet to sell a single presidential ad. But 50 miles away in Manchester, N.H., WMUR-TV (Channel 9) has aired nearly 3,000 spots since March 4.

Historically, Massachusetts is a deeply Democratic state. New Hampshire could go either way, which is why the Bush and Kerry camps are buying airtime there with six long and expensive months to go before the Nov. 2 election.

"This is months ahead of time," said WMUR-TV general manager Jeff Bartlett. "We had budgeted no political inventory in March."

Four years ago, the first wave of general election ads in the George W. Bush-Al Gore race did not appear until June. While the advertising in hotly contested states has been surprisingly intense and early this time around, the blitz appears not to have made much of an impact on the polls. By countering each other on the air in battleground states, Democrats and Republicans may be keeping each other in check. Or, some analysts say, they might be broadcasting to deaf ears.

The theme of the 2004 ad battle may be that never has so much been spent so soon -- an estimated $100 million or so to air more than 100,000 spots -- to woo so few.

Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said that in a nation in which as many as 90 percent of the voters have made up their minds, "1 or 2 or 3 percent of the vote may be influenced by the course of the campaign and political advertising. Do I think that advertising matters? Yes, but very much at the margins."

Herb Asher, a political science professor at Ohio State University, said the level of local TV advertising to date "felt like it was mid-October." But with only a small percentage of voters likely to be moved by ad messages, "the question becomes, 'Do you really win them now?' "

For the Bush campaign -- which, according to an Associated Press tally, has spent at least $60 million on advertising so far -- the answer is apparently yes.

"I just think the public has a real appetite," said Bush chief strategist Matthew Dowd. "You obviously want to talk to people when they're very interested. It's not a gray election."

Validating that view is a new survey from the Vanishing Voter Project at Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy revealing that 42 percent of the respondents are paying a "great deal" or "quite a bit" of attention to the 2004 campaign compared with only 15 percent at this point in 2000.

Goldstein's analysis of most of Bush's March advertising, based on data from the media research company TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, found the president's team spending about 40 percent of its dollars in crucial states like Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And a strategy that began with ads stressing Bush's strength and leadership has steadily evolved into a series of attacks on Kerry's economic record, decisiveness, and national security credentials. A new Bush ad called "Weapons" that was unveiled last week claims the Democrat opposed key weapons in the war on terror and features a US soldier staring solemnly into the camera.

William Benoit, a communications professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has evaluated a total of 20 ads from both candidates and found that Bush's spots have been "significantly more negative than Kerry."

At the same time, observers credit the ads for staying on point.

"I feel like the Bush campaign is certainly on their message on Kerry that he's a flip-flopper, that he'll equivocate," said Chuck Todd, editor-in-chief of the Hotline, a political newsletter on the Internet.

"Bush can basically hum any tune he wants to hum, and the campaign is controlling 100 percent of the message," added Evan Tracey, the chief operating officer of TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG.

Tracey noted that other groups allied with Democrats are also on the air, but that doesn't necessarily boost Kerry's response to Bush. "The Kerry campaign is out there making their message of the day, [but] they can't really control the other messages."

Those other messages come from liberal organizations -- most notably the Media Fund and MoveOn.Org -- that have also flooded the airwaves with ads to try to offset Bush's significant fund-raising lead.

According to AP estimates, the Kerry campaign has spent about $17 million to date on television spots while its allies have spent roughly $30 million above that. By law, Kerry and these groups cannot coordinate their efforts, but both are working to oust Bush.

MoveOn.Org, an umbrella group that gained national notice when it ran a "Bush in 30 seconds" ad contest that generated more than 1,500 submissions, had never produced spots until this campaign cycle.

In this election, said president Wes Boyd, "It's clear we are perceived as relevant."

Since mid-March, the Kerry ads have featured a mix of attacks and positive messages as he tried to introduce himself and raise doubts about the incumbent, without, in adviser Tad Devine's words, going "tit for tat with the president."

On April 21, the campaign unveiled two new ads for the battleground states -- "Risk" and "Commitment" -- in which a somber but determined-sounding Kerry vows to keep the country safe, invest in health care, education, and jobs, and get the international community to share the burdens of Iraq.

"Our latest wave of advertising is the thematic structure of the campaign," said Devine. "We're talking about John Kerry's commitment to build a stronger America. He lays it out directly to the camera."

Thus far, analysts say, neither side's strategy can be considered a success. Kerry still "needs to reach a basic threshold of credibility . . . and he needs to reach credibility [on] terrorism and the war," said Goldstein.

But if Bush was hoping for an early advertising knockout, "it's hard to say that he got $50 million worth of oomph for his $50 million bucks," said John Gorman, president of the Opinion Dynamics polling and market research firm. "The race clearly hasn't moved at all. It's basically 45-45, and it's been 45-45 for two months."

A recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey found that in 18 battleground states, the early ad barrages had failed to noticeably change voters' opinions of the candidates.