Until recently, it wasn’t entirely clear what, if anything, worked against Trump. From the moment he announced his presidential campaign five years ago, not even the most incendiary material seemed to cause significant damage. Not calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” not “blood coming out of her wherever,” not “grab them by the p---y” — all of which were featured by Democrats in character-based ads attacking Trump.
By Election Day, most voters didn’t find Trump honest or trustworthy, according to exit polls. But they voted for him anyway. And throughout much of his first term, including his impeachment, Democrats struggled to find an anti-Trump message that gained traction.
In their preparations for 2020, outside Democratic groups spent more than a year surveying voters in swing states by phone and online. They convened in-person focus groups and enlisted voters in swing states to keep diaries of their media consumption.
Multiple outside groups said they began to test their ads more rigorously than in 2016, using online panels to determine how likely an ad was to either change a viewer’s impression of Trump or to change how he or she planned to vote.
...
“One thing we saw in polling a lot before the coronavirus outbreak is that people didn’t think he was a strong leader or a good leader, they complained about his Twitter,” said Nick Ahamed, analytics director at Priorities USA. “But they had a hard time connecting those character flaws they saw in him with their day-to-day experience.”
Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and recent protests, he said, “really made concrete for people the ways in which his leadership has direct consequences on them and their loved ones … It’s easier to make ads that talk about his leadership than before the outbreak.”
...
...the ad makers’ overarching takeaway from their research was this: While Trump may not be vulnerable on issues of character alone, as he demonstrated in 2016, he is vulnerable when character is tied to his policy record on the economy and health care.
...
Trump complained on Twitter that “the Democrats are doing totally false advertising.” But after the Democratic National Committee posted its first TV ads since 2016 — one asserting that Trump had “brought America down with him” and the other a more focused critique of his handling of China and trade — even the president acknowledged the effectiveness of the assault.
“On the campaign they’ll say such horrible things about me. It’s a very unfair business,” he said on Fox News. “But the ad [Democrats] did this morning, it’s a great ad for them.”
...
“I think Democrats have had a theory...for a while, but it really hasn’t been until the last few months when it started finally getting traction,” said Mark Putnam, the famed Democratic ad maker...“And with just the way he’s handled one crisis after another in really the worst possible way, it’s finally sinking in.”
...
[Pause. Let's think about this for a moment. Trump's character didn't matter in 2016, Trump's character didn't matter in the 2020 election cycle until the Trump Epidemic hit. Since, Trump's character has mattered when "tied to his policy." Okay Democrats, so your epiphany is that the Trump Epidemic matters? Trump's character, if NOT tied to policy, would still not have mattered. You did just say that. How much money did you spend on those hocus pocus focus groups?]
...
Yet voters still know less about Biden than Trump, according to internal polling from both parties, and there is an undercurrent of tension within the Democratic Party about how much effort to spend attacking Trump versus building Biden up.
In a study based on data from tens thousands of survey participants — and cited frequently by Democrats — researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University found earlier this month that messages about the lesser-known candidate, Biden, were more effective at persuading voters than messages about Trump.
[And that is one of the problems attributed to Hillary Clinton in 2016!]
Echoing the study’s findings, David Doak, a retired longtime Democratic strategist and ad maker, said that while “the race is being decided right now by the negativity towards Trump … what I would do if I were the Biden [campaign] is to try and fill in that favorability, to strengthen what he’s getting there and move his favorability rating up.”
Jimmy Siegel, an ad maker who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign and for Michael Bloomberg this cycle, said, “You need more positive Biden stuff” — what another strategist called “more Biden cowbell.”
[Throughout this article Democratic strategists with some smugness disparage the Clinton campaign's approach and say they have done much more intense focus group analysis than Clinton did. And they simply blow off the Lincoln Project's nuclear option as ineffectual and in fact counter-productive: LP in fact is driving more voters, angered by the scorched earth of LP'ads--into Trump's column, Dems say. I disagree, but I can be persuaded, although I am not yet NEAR there yet. Take them at their word, although I think their headquarters are where their hindquarters are. They say they are doing much more work on focus groups and survey research to identify the persuadable Indies and some GOP voters that Clinton did not do as well with. But they are demonstrably not following the anti-Clinton strategy. Almost every ad the Biden campaign has released is a criticism, an "attack" ad on Trump. It is political campaigning 101 that you first define your own candidate, to prevent caricature and Biden's favorability rating is, imo, lower than it should be. So, if the Biden campaign has broken with tht Clinton '16 campaign strategy then they should be following the sage advice at Berkeley and Yale, of David Doak and Jimmy Siegel, and ringing Joe's "cowbells." They have almost exclusively not done that and instead have launched C+ to B graded ads "attacking," comparing and contrasting more accurately, Trump. It seems to me imperative that they end this naval contemplation conference call and start flooding the air with gauzy pro-Biden ads only for a time.]
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/democrats-ads-trump-341903
By Election Day, most voters didn’t find Trump honest or trustworthy, according to exit polls. But they voted for him anyway. And throughout much of his first term, including his impeachment, Democrats struggled to find an anti-Trump message that gained traction.
In their preparations for 2020, outside Democratic groups spent more than a year surveying voters in swing states by phone and online. They convened in-person focus groups and enlisted voters in swing states to keep diaries of their media consumption.
Multiple outside groups said they began to test their ads more rigorously than in 2016, using online panels to determine how likely an ad was to either change a viewer’s impression of Trump or to change how he or she planned to vote.
...
“One thing we saw in polling a lot before the coronavirus outbreak is that people didn’t think he was a strong leader or a good leader, they complained about his Twitter,” said Nick Ahamed, analytics director at Priorities USA. “But they had a hard time connecting those character flaws they saw in him with their day-to-day experience.”
Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and recent protests, he said, “really made concrete for people the ways in which his leadership has direct consequences on them and their loved ones … It’s easier to make ads that talk about his leadership than before the outbreak.”
...
...the ad makers’ overarching takeaway from their research was this: While Trump may not be vulnerable on issues of character alone, as he demonstrated in 2016, he is vulnerable when character is tied to his policy record on the economy and health care.
...
Trump complained on Twitter that “the Democrats are doing totally false advertising.” But after the Democratic National Committee posted its first TV ads since 2016 — one asserting that Trump had “brought America down with him” and the other a more focused critique of his handling of China and trade — even the president acknowledged the effectiveness of the assault.
“On the campaign they’ll say such horrible things about me. It’s a very unfair business,” he said on Fox News. “But the ad [Democrats] did this morning, it’s a great ad for them.”
...
“I think Democrats have had a theory...for a while, but it really hasn’t been until the last few months when it started finally getting traction,” said Mark Putnam, the famed Democratic ad maker...“And with just the way he’s handled one crisis after another in really the worst possible way, it’s finally sinking in.”
...
[Pause. Let's think about this for a moment. Trump's character didn't matter in 2016, Trump's character didn't matter in the 2020 election cycle until the Trump Epidemic hit. Since, Trump's character has mattered when "tied to his policy." Okay Democrats, so your epiphany is that the Trump Epidemic matters? Trump's character, if NOT tied to policy, would still not have mattered. You did just say that. How much money did you spend on those hocus pocus focus groups?]
...
Yet voters still know less about Biden than Trump, according to internal polling from both parties, and there is an undercurrent of tension within the Democratic Party about how much effort to spend attacking Trump versus building Biden up.
In a study based on data from tens thousands of survey participants — and cited frequently by Democrats — researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Yale University found earlier this month that messages about the lesser-known candidate, Biden, were more effective at persuading voters than messages about Trump.
[And that is one of the problems attributed to Hillary Clinton in 2016!]
Echoing the study’s findings, David Doak, a retired longtime Democratic strategist and ad maker, said that while “the race is being decided right now by the negativity towards Trump … what I would do if I were the Biden [campaign] is to try and fill in that favorability, to strengthen what he’s getting there and move his favorability rating up.”
Jimmy Siegel, an ad maker who worked on Clinton’s 2008 campaign and for Michael Bloomberg this cycle, said, “You need more positive Biden stuff” — what another strategist called “more Biden cowbell.”
[Throughout this article Democratic strategists with some smugness disparage the Clinton campaign's approach and say they have done much more intense focus group analysis than Clinton did. And they simply blow off the Lincoln Project's nuclear option as ineffectual and in fact counter-productive: LP in fact is driving more voters, angered by the scorched earth of LP'ads--into Trump's column, Dems say. I disagree, but I can be persuaded, although I am not yet NEAR there yet. Take them at their word, although I think their headquarters are where their hindquarters are. They say they are doing much more work on focus groups and survey research to identify the persuadable Indies and some GOP voters that Clinton did not do as well with. But they are demonstrably not following the anti-Clinton strategy. Almost every ad the Biden campaign has released is a criticism, an "attack" ad on Trump. It is political campaigning 101 that you first define your own candidate, to prevent caricature and Biden's favorability rating is, imo, lower than it should be. So, if the Biden campaign has broken with tht Clinton '16 campaign strategy then they should be following the sage advice at Berkeley and Yale, of David Doak and Jimmy Siegel, and ringing Joe's "cowbells." They have almost exclusively not done that and instead have launched C+ to B graded ads "attacking," comparing and contrasting more accurately, Trump. It seems to me imperative that they end this naval contemplation conference call and start flooding the air with gauzy pro-Biden ads only for a time.]
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/02/democrats-ads-trump-341903
