Leading Local Insights
Unpacking the Unexpected Record Political Ad Spending of 2024 with BIA and Steve Passwaiter
Get ready for the most expensive election season in history! With political ad spending projected to hit a staggering $11.1 billion according to BIA estimates, the 2024 races are shaping up to be a financial frenzy. Steve Passwaiter, the president of Silver Oak Political, is joining forces with BIA's Forecasting VP, Nicole Ovadia, to make sense of it all. From the factors fueling the spending spree to the daily shifts in where campaigns are placing their ad dollars, they dive into it all. As Passwaiter says, “Buckle up – it's going to be a wild ride!”
Get ready for the most expensive election season in history! With political ad spending projected to hit a staggering $11.1 billion according to BIA estimates, the 2024 races are shaping up to be a financial frenzy. Steve Passwaiter, the president of Silver Oak Political, is joining forces with BIA's Forecasting VP, Nicole Ovadia, to make sense of it all. From the factors fueling the spending spree to the daily shifts in where campaigns are placing their ad dollars, they dive into it all. As Passwaiter says, “Buckle up – it's going to be a wild ride!”
Hello and welcome to BIA Advisory Services' Leading Local Insights podcast. My name is Nicole Ovadia and I'm the VP of Forecasting and Analysis here at BIA. I am thrilled to host this podcast, where we will focus on all things political. With the election coming in November, there's a lot to discuss and unpack, including who will spend, where they will spend and on what media they will spend. Thankfully, we have a seasoned expert with us today to talk through all of these questions. Steve Passwaiter is the president of Silver Oak Political, a DC-based political consulting firm. He is a monthly contributor to Ad Age, where he writes a column on what's happening with political advertising, and often offers his take on current political matters on LinkedIn. I am so thrilled that Steve is here to join us today. Thank you. Thank you for being here and, Steve, please say hello to our audience.
Steve Passwaiter:Well, thanks, Nicole. I'm not sure I'm worthy of that kind of an introduction, but I do appreciate it and it's a pleasure to be with you today with this podcast.
Nicole Ovadia:You are more than worthy of that introduction, and we're going to prove that over the course of this conversation. I can assure you of that.
Steve Passwaiter:Well, I sure hope so.
Nicole Ovadia:Absolutely. Let's dive in and first. Actually, what I want to do is level set where we are currently before we start to talk about what's changed. So here at BIA we are currently forecasting $11.1 billion will be spent on local political advertising in 2024. That forecast was published in March of this year and you might remember Nikki Haley was still in the discussions at that time. So the team is currently working on updating that forecast number and we expect to publish an updated number end of June, early July. But, steve, in your mind, what has changed since March? Even back then, we kind of expected it to be Biden versus Trump in the end. So are things working out as you expected or is anything major happened to change your political forecasts?
Steve Passwaiter:No, not really. I think most of the estimates are falling somewhere between 10.5 and 12. There's one out there that's a bit higher than that, but I think that still remains. Obviously tracks a lot of the headlines, but really, when you look underneath the hood, the numbers are really being driven at this point in the cycle by Senate races. We've got half a dozen Senate races that are incredibly competitive and in some cases you know Ohio is already over a quarter of a billion dollars. Montana is now pushing over one hundred and fifty million dollars, which is just amazing for a, you know, for for a state like Montana, that is a that is a record. I mean, the Danes Bullock matchup back in 2020 was the record holder at right around one hundred and fifty million. Back in 2020 was the record holder at right around 150 million, and we're already past that and we still have months to go before the election.
Nicole Ovadia:Honestly, I'm ready to open up a newspaper in Helena tomorrow and close it on September 6th, and I think that's a great business opportunity. Because, yeah, I just don't think there's enough impressions for Montana to, you know, handle what has come in their way. But that was a little bit of a teaser, steve. Let's get, let's talk about presidential first and then we'll get to the Senate races a little bit later in the podcast. So, in terms of the presidential race, very recently the New York trial in New York with Trump has been resolved, and that resolved with convictions, which has had a significant impact in terms of spending and advertising. So essentially, what we've seen is that this is sparking massive fundraising for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Steve, could you talk a little bit about what you've seen in the immediate aftermath? You talk a little bit about what you've seen in the immediate aftermath, given the court cases and what's transpired, and how you expect this to play out in terms of fundraising. Where will the money be spent? On what platforms? How is this going to change things?
Steve Passwaiter:In the immediate hours following these guilty verdicts in New York, the Trump people reported that they had raised $35 million overnight. According to a report in the Hill, that's a boatload of money. The Republican Senate arm was also announcing that they had a pretty big haul, although I didn't see exactly what that number was overnight. The Biden folks were obviously fundraising off of this too, citing the fact that really the only way to eliminate Mr Trump was to beat him in November and encouraging people if they had not made a donation to the Biden campaign that this was a great time to do that. Not surprisingly, both sides are going to try to make as much as they can off of this and they you know they were acting to form last. You know, last evening after this, these verdicts were announced.
Steve Passwaiter:Now I don't necessarily know that. I think of the long term. I don't know how much this changes things. It may change the direction of the creatives. That get done. I mean, I think Mr Trump is in his mind now a political prisoner and to you know, the Biden folks have already started referring to him as a convicted felon, donald Trump. And we'll probably see those kind of monikers play themselves out in the creatives as we move forward. But at this point in time, you know the Biden folks. Even though Trump outraced them in April, biden still has a lot more cash on hand than Mr Trump does, and I have to imagine that that may play itself out through the rest of the campaign. I think Mr Biden's going to have as much money as he needs in order to get his message out to the voters.
Nicole Ovadia:Interesting. So you talked a little bit about the content of these fundraising messages. Could you speak a little bit more about where these messages are? In the past, in our forecasting, we've assigned a lot of fundraising dollars to social media, facebooks and whatnot of the world where we're pretty lucrative in previous elections in terms of fundraising. But I think that that is shifting a little bit or maxing out. So can you talk a little bit about the way in which fundraising is done, what media it's being spent on and what's most effective for these campaigns?
Steve Passwaiter:Well, obviously Facebook has been a great source of fundraising in the past. The campaigns used a lot of it. If you would have looked at the Facebook archive back in 2020, you would have noted that Mr Biden was spending a boatload of money in California and clearly he was not looking for votes in California, he was doing fundraising in California. But I do agree with your assessment that Facebook has lost some of that luster for a few different reasons and it really doesn't necessarily attract the fundraising pleas that it once did. And now there's a lot of texting that gets done. That gets done.
Steve Passwaiter:A lot of folks have a, you know, look at your look at the text part on their phones and, all of a sudden, things like a mile and a half long from all these political candidates that are soliciting email is still obviously a favorite, you know, and there has been a little bit of an issue with small dollar donors not replying. So I think you know, maybe that's been fixed now if we believe Mr Trump's numbers from what he raised overnight. But this is, you know, this is kind of how fundraising gets done these days. And then obviously there are these massive fundraisers where it costs you half a million dollars a plate and you get to spend, you know, 30 seconds getting your picture taken with the president. You know there's. You know these guys have figured out how exactly you tap everybody from the billionaires all the way down to your grandmother who wants to get two dollars out of her social security check in order to support a political candidate.
Nicole Ovadia:It's so interesting, I mean, what you're describing, I mean it's just such a broad spectrum, right? I mean that's such a long tail, if you will, and, as you noted, the very expensive one-off events all the way down to that very long tail of we'll take every dollar over text or email that you're willing to donate, and you know, and obviously, bringing that all together and amassing it is what's setting us up for a larger political spending than we've ever witnessed before. So, with this advanced, if you will, or accelerated fundraising, or whatever you want to call it, do you expect I mean this brings me back to our first question Do you expect our forecasts are too low at this point? Like, is this all part of what was expected to happen, or are we looking at sums of money that we've never seen before and we might all be underestimating our forecast for political Well, I believe we've already taken that advanced fundraising into account in order to justify the numbers that we've all put to the public.
Steve Passwaiter:And you have to imagine that. Let's just take a big round number like $12 billion, for example. If $12 billion is going to be spent, that means $20 billion or somewhere thereabouts is going to have to be raised. You know, there's a formula in politics that says 55 to maybe 60% of every dollar that gets raised is dedicated to advertising. The rest goes to overhead, if you will, to overhead, if you will. But now, a significant portion of every dollar that is raised does indeed go to advertising in some shape or form. And to think that there's $20 billion that's being raised is, you know it's a big number, that's a big big number. And again, you know it's a big big number. And again, it's the closeness of everything that really drives the competition and therefore drives the fundraising. Because, let's face it, you know everything is so close but it's maybe two seats in the House, two seats in the Senate and you know the presidential race is still pretty close, and that just drives, drives the activity.
Nicole Ovadia:Speaking of which, you mentioned Biden and California, and that leads me to thinking do you expect Biden will campaign and are we going to see more spending by Democrats in states markets more spending than we would have expected because Biden might not be there in person as much? Or what are you expecting from Biden in terms of physically campaigning and therefore the effects of spending by his campaign?
Steve Passwaiter:And I believe you will, and we already are. While Mr Trump has been in court the last several weeks, mr Biden has been out on the campaign trail, as has the vice president, so I do. Can you really put him out there on the road? You know that, I think, is a big question. So is there a possibility that the Biden folks maybe spend more than 55 or 60 percent on advertising? Yeah, I'd say I think there's a reasonable chance of that happening, because, you know, maybe he can't make all the trips that he needs to, and if Mr Trump expands the map, as he currently seems to be doing, he may have to. He may find himself having to do events, or the vice president may have to do events in places that they would not have expected to have done them otherwise have to do events in places that they would not have expected to have done them otherwise.
Nicole Ovadia:Right, I mean, I could see, you know, I mean Trump doing four events in Pennsylvania in a day where Biden might do one, maybe two. You know, I mean, even if he's physically out there, the number of appearances will likely be less and therefore spending will need to happen to make up for that, or spending will need to happen.
Steve Passwaiter:To make up for that, there are different ways that you can make your presence in the state, and still being there yourself is clearly the most powerful way to do that. Alternative is to send surrogates or you know, and or spend more of the spend more money in advertising in order to push the message.
Nicole Ovadia:So let's start to get a little more specific about the presidential election. So what are you expecting? What are your top battleground states? I mean, let's start pretty general. You know what are your obvious top battleground states, just to make sure we're all on the same page. And then what are states that we should be keeping an eye on, Because either the Democrats or the Republicans want to turn them into a battleground state. You mentioned New Hampshire. You mentioned sorry, I think you mentioned Michigan. I can't remember, but I'm going to ask you to repeat, like, what are the obvious and what are the less obvious?
Steve Passwaiter:Pretty clear that there's a handful of states out there that are considered swing states, right, I think we look at Georgia, we look at Pennsylvania, which is sort of becoming the center of the political universe these days. There's Nevada, which has suddenly kind of become a battleground state. It really wasn't considered that to be earlier. And then there's the neighboring Arizona, where you've also got that possibility. North Carolina Trump's carried North Carolina twice, but you know there's some thought that that one is probably close enough that it should get. You know, it'll probably end up getting a little bit of attention out of all of that, right. And then there's Wisconsin, there's Michigan, so sort of that blue wall group of states Pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin that are always considered to be swing. And you know, recent polling has had Trump ahead in pretty much all of those states, with the exception of Wisconsin, where I believe it's either tied or it's a point or two in Mr Biden's favor, depending what poll you consume. So those are, you know, those are the obvious places where we know, you know, and I think the interesting fact of that is you know where's Florida, where's Ohio? And the answer is well, you know, being a native Buckeye, it's hard for me to imagine Ohio not being a swing state, but it really isn't. And Florida has taken a pretty significant turn to the red. There are now more registered Republicans in Florida than Democrats, and it used to be the other way around. Now I think the Democrats still think they have a chance in Florida. Mr Biden has said they intend to make Florida competitive.
Steve Passwaiter:Clearly, mr Biden has spent a fair amount of time in North Carolina. They intend to make. It sounds like they do indeed tend to make a pitch to voters in North Carolina. And then we talked about places that we may not have thought of as being places to keep our eye on, and Virginia. You know, maybe New Hampshire, maybe Minnesota, where the polling has gotten a lot tighter in recent weeks. Are you know now whether any of those turn out to, you know, be actually as close as the polling indicates? I guess we'll find out over the course of time, but there's some thought that you know these states all of a sudden are starting to pull very close and where they haven't traditionally. I mean I don't think Trump, we were talking about New York. I think you know we'll we'll see snow in August before you know we see Trump win New York, but the polling is kind of interesting nonetheless.
Nicole Ovadia:Yeah, and neither of those things are impossible at this point in the world that we're living in, which is fascinating. So one of the things you did talk about your native state of Ohio, which I think is a great transition because outside of the presidential election, there are a bunch of other elections, as you mentioned at the top of this podcast 34 Senate races that are happening with 20 Democrats defending their seats. Ohio is one of those Arizona, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania all on our radars, of course, but do you think? I mean you also mentioned that you know 250 million dollars has already been spent in Ohio, so do you think that these talk a little bit, if you could, about how these other races are going to affect spending this year? And in a state like Ohio that may or may not be up for grabs presidentially, they're still getting all of this money. How is that going to happen and affect the ultimate outcomes of those states?
Steve Passwaiter:The Democrats have sort of got their backs to the wall in the Senate this year, simply because they're defending so many seats and they're defending a fair amount of those in places where Trump won, and that comes to its biggest degree in places like Ohio and Montana, which are pretty big Trump states historically Montana, which are pretty big Trump states historically. But on the other hand, I can't think of two more resilient politicians than Sherrod Brown and John Tester. John Tester has been flying into the wind in Montana for quite a while and he manages to find a way. You know he's very resilient and he finds a way to win. Whether or not he can carry that streak is going to have a lot to say about who controls the Senate in the next Congress. It's a foregone conclusion that West Virginia is gone. I don't think anybody believes that the Democrats have a prayer in West Virginia. So Jim Justice, who's currently the governor, is likely the next senator from West Virginia. So if you look at that already, 51-49 is now 50-50. So the question for Republicans is, if you can beat Brown or Tester, then you've got a thin majority, and you know. Can you expand the field in Arizona, for example. Can you expand the field in Wisconsin, where, you know, tammy Baldwin seems to be doing pretty well. In the polling that I've seen she seems to be running, you know, decently ahead of her Republican challenger. And then there's always Michigan, which seems to be kind of the wild card of this, because we don't know which way, you know, those folks in Michigan are going to go, because there's a group of folks up there who aren't too pleased with the Democrats at this particular time and does the issues that the president's having in Michigan roll down to Alyssa Slotkin, who's trying to win that seat for the Democrats. And then there's always Pennsylvania, where you've got, you know, dave McCormick and Bob Casey. You know, casey is a really popular political name in Pennsylvania. He will not be easy to beat, but McCormick has the resources to do it and I think the Republicans will put as much as they have to behind him to see if they can win that seat right. And so we've talked about all the normal ones. But then there's this big, whopping surprise, just to the south of pennsylvania, and it's called maryland, oh, where I don't think anybody in the world thought that the democrats would have to fight to keep a seat. Uh, that ben cardin is retiring right.
Steve Passwaiter:Maryland is, you know, deeply blue. And all of a sudden we have a race in Maryland with Larry Hogan running on the Republican side and that's going to be a fun one to watch. And Democrats are going to have to spend money in Maryland that they otherwise probably didn't think they'd have to spend. Hogan is an enormously popular former governor. I mean I saw one poll and his approval rating was like 76 percent and a lot of that comes from Democrats. But Democrats are going to have to consider whether or not a vote for Hogan hands control the Senate to the Republican Party and I think that will clearly give Maryland Democrats some pause as they go to the Republican Party.
Steve Passwaiter:And I think that will clearly give Maryland Democrats some pause as they go to the polls. And I mean Hogan's already out trying to tell people that he's not a sure vote for the Republican agenda. And you know that he thinks a woman, you know he intends to protect a woman's right to choose and kind of doing a more of an independent and kind of doing a more of an independent kind of thought pattern than you know. Hey, I'm just your traditional Republican. So that's the surprise. I think that's the surprise of the cycle.
Nicole Ovadia:That's really interesting. Some of those races I mean especially. My question is do you think so, with it being so close in terms of the Senate potentially flipping? Do you think might the Republicans change strategies and focus on one state Senate race that is the most likely and spend all of their money Like, could you see them going all in on Ohio Because they're they're thinking we only need one, we're going to spend all of our money, we're going to win Ohio, we'll have our 51. Or do you expect them to spend in the five or six states and hoping to flip one of them? Could you see an all in or is this more going to be spread? What is your thought?
Steve Passwaiter:there. No, I think they're all in. I think they're all in, but you have to remember that a lot of the spending decisions get driven by polling. So if at some point one of these candidates, you know whether it's Kerry Lake in Arizona or Tim Sheehy in Montana, or you know McCormick in Pennsylvania, and they note that the polling is starting to look pretty, bad then, all of a sudden, you're going to reallocate your resources and put them in places where you know you can win.
Nicole Ovadia:Yeah.
Steve Passwaiter:Right, and those are decisions that get taken throughout the course of a cycle. But you're not going to throw more money when you know that your chances of winning don't look very promising. You'll put it in the places where you know you've got a much better chance.
Nicole Ovadia:Yeah, and that's a great just segue into. You know, at BIA we are tracking every market individually, and so that's you know. One of the things to stay close to and stay close to our forecast over the course of the next few months is keeping up with those nuances and in real time, how things are changing and how the market spending is changing, because there's a lot of, you know, avails being held, if you will, but these races are going to change and the dollars are going to shift significantly from market to market. So we're going to stay on top of that, of course, as we continue to update our forecast and we continue these conversations. And OK, so we've had a lot of discussion here, and I do want to leave you with one more question, steve what are we missing? So what haven't we talked about? What is one thing that we're simply not talking enough about but you think is going to have a significant impact on the upcoming election? Yeah, like what did I forget to talk to you?
Steve Passwaiter:The whole. You know I think there's a. There are 13 states where there are ballot measures specifically dealing with abortion. Now that Dobbs has, essentially we've gone from one rule to 50 rules and there are, I think, 13 states where there are ballot measures about whether or not abortion should be part of the state's constitution. There was one in Ohio last year and Ohio was a very red state, but that resolution passed.
Nicole Ovadia:Wisconsin two years ago.
Steve Passwaiter:Yeah, but that resolution passed Was constant two years ago. Yeah, it did very well and I believe Democrats are hoping in some places like Florida, where we talked about before, that they can bring enough of those female voters to the booth who believe very strongly in this particular, these protections, and perhaps that drives Mr Biden to be more competitive in some of those places. So it'll be worth keeping an eye on exactly how that all plays out as we come down the stretch here.
Nicole Ovadia:Yeah, it sounds like you're saying you think single issue voters will be could have a significant impact on the impact of this election and even them voting in ways we might not have expected them to because of this singular issue that is so important for so many in either direction of women's rights and abortion.
Steve Passwaiter:Yeah, you know I'm not necessarily the expert in this part of the world, but you have to imagine that, given Ohio's makeup, which is, you know, pretty Republican, how many Republican voters showed up and supported that measure.
Nicole Ovadia:Yeah.
Steve Passwaiter:And if that's the case, then all of a sudden do we have kind of this split ticket thing where somebody could show up and be a Republican or a Republican-leaning independent and still end up casting a vote for a Republican candidate? That's the thing that you sort of kind of wonder whether you know. Okay, you know, is there any there there? But I think it's worth you know kind of. I've read in a couple places where folks have sort of hypothesized that that's likely how that measure passed, with the margin that it did in Ohio was that it did need some support from Republicans.
Nicole Ovadia:Oh, so interesting. Steve, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your thoughts and insights. This has been very educational and eye-opening for me. This is going to be a really exciting political cycle and it's incredible to see how things are changing and evolving in real time. We here at BIA will stay close to this and continue to update our forecast as necessary, and we will absolutely be having Steve back for another guest podcast later in the summer, assuming he's willing to come. Steve, I'm putting you on the spot.
Steve Passwaiter:Yeah, you sure, yeah, you sure. Well, you know, you know, you know my, my, my career has crossed the BIA path in a big way, so I'm I appreciate the invitation and look forward to continuing the conversation.
Nicole Ovadia:Fantastic and for everybody out there listening. Thank you for joining us as well. If you have any questions for myself, for Steve, anyone, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at podcast at biacom. We look forward to bringing you more insightful conversations and more on local media throughout the year ahead. Have a great day.