BILLINGS — Many Montanans are excited for this election cycle to be over, as it will bring an end to the avalanche of ads being seen and received. Candidates often pay thousands of dollars to get their spots on television, but that begs the question: Do the ads work?
According to Open Secrets, Montana ranked number three for U.S. Senate races with the most money raised, and number four for the most money spent. Combining candidate spending and outside groups, such as Political Action Committees, the total spending in the Montana U.S. Senate race has exceeded $255 million.
“Just a lot of the negative comments from each politician. Just a lot of bashing and headbutting and I haven't heard a lot about real policy,” said Billings resident Robby Gress.
Together, candidate campaigns and outside groups are spending about $226 per person in the state.
“People see these commercials more than, say, news coverage,” said Louis Jacobson, the chief correspondent at PolitiFact. “Montana is one of the centers of the universe for this sort of political advertising this year.”
But do all the political ads work?
According to Jacobson, that is a hard question to answer, but if they didn't pay off even a little, they wouldn't be all over the place.
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“I think that if it were shown that it doesn't work, they wouldn't be spending so much money on it. It's sort of proof by itself that people think that it works," Jacobson said. “It does tend to have an effect on the way that the campaign plays out.”
Incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester's campaign has spent over $79 million, and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy's campaign has spent nearly $22 million.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, candidates are paying anywhere from around $2,000 to over $5,000 for an ad spot during some evening newscasts in Montana. The price is higher when it comes to PAC ads.
“We are governed by the FCC to allow federal candidates and state candidates airtime on our station. Therefore, they go by any inventory they want to, as long as they're paying the fair market rate that we've established,” said Ryan Brosseau, the director of sales at KTVQ. “2020 was a record year then. So now, 2024 is a record year.”
Those commercials stick with people, even if it's positive or negative.
Billings resident Benjamin Robertson said his kids are repeating what they hear in the ads.
"I go home and I talk to my little ones and their minds are impressed upon both on how I lean and then they take and they start to assimilate the information from these ads and go, "All right, the negative." They start to repeat those negatives. And believe the negatives. And the good," Robertson said. “The ads don't tell us the whole story. I have to go and do it in my own reading.”
Robertson hopes people do their own research on the candidates, rather than just taking the advertisements' words.
"I guess it would just be encouraging all the people that are putting out these ads. You might think that you're creating information. You're feeding the knowledge base of your constituents. But really, in a way, using taglines, mudslinging and whatnot, you are funneling people's eyesight. You're narrowing their eyesight," he said. "Just encouraging people to do their research and align themselves with the people that speak to them. That speak to your value system rather than tell us about how the other guy is crappy. It's not necessarily that the guy is crappy. It's just that he believes different things than I do."
