BCAD director and faculty affiliate David Broockman’s research on political advertising was featured in POLITICO

Some political ads work a lot better than others. But nobody really knows what will reliably make an ad click with voters.

That’s one of the major findings of a new study from researchers who analyzed data from Swayable, a platform used by Democrats to test the effectiveness of different messages and advertisements.

The study analyzed more than 600 ads produced by more than 50 campaigns and outside groups across the 2018 and 2020 cycles. Some ads are definitely more effective at influencing vote choice than others, the researchers found, but what voters respond to year-over-year is far less clear.

“If you make two ads, your best guess should be that one of them is going to be 50 percent better than the other. That’s a big deal, right?” said David Broockman, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley and the corresponding author on the paper. “Or if you make four or five ads, the best one is going to be twice as good as the typical ad. That’s a really big deal.”

Original article

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