Political Campaigns’ Use of E-mail vs. Television Advertising

Abstract

This research explores how political campaigns use e-mail and television advertising differently. The data consist of 267,675 television ad airings sponsored, and 2,164 e-mails sent, by the forty-seven U.S. Senate candidates who used both communication channels during the 2014 general election cycle. Major findings include that fundraising requests and get-out-the-vote messages were more commonly found in campaign e-mails than in television ads; that campaigns were more likely to use partisan appeals in their e-mails while they often used bipartisan appeals in their television ads; and that campaigns sometimes mentioned issues owned by the other party more frequently than their opponents did when using television ads whereas they tended to focus on issues owned by their party in their e-mails. Campaigns’ use of multiple communication channels within a single election cycle should be monitored more systematically and thoroughly.