A new report shows the Harris-Walz campaign spent nearly $1.4 billion on political ads in the race. The Democrats outspent Donald Trump and the Republicans by nearly $460 million and even with that, it wasn't enough to defeat the former president who will return to the White House four years after losing to President Joe Biden in 2020.
The vast majority of both campaigns' spending was in the seven battleground states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada. Democrats outspent Republicans mainly using traditional political advertisements on television.
Minnesota Star Tribune Editorial writer John Rash is a former Director of Media Analysis advertising and marketing firm Campbell-Mithun and says it proved to be a bad strategy.
"With media consumption, fracturing and fragmenting, there are fewer people watching the same show, getting the same message and acting or reacting accordingly to what a candidate or campaign has to say," Rash explained.
Rash also says President Elect Donald Trump's campaign used a different means of reaching out on social media, in podcasts, especially with the very popular Joe Rogan, and using billionaire supporter Elon Musk to get his message out.
"President elect Trump was highly effective in reaching out to nontraditional media," says Rash. "And if anything, the media story of this Election was his use of podcasts and going on shows like Joe Rogan's."
While Harris had an offer to appear on the Rogan podcast, they never matched schedules with Harris' campaign insisting he come to Washington to interview the vice president, and Rogan's team insisting she record in his Texas studios.
Harris entered this race in July after President Joe Biden was convinced to stand down having already secured his party's nomination. That change at the top of the ticket sparked an avalanche of spending from both sides. Rash says Vice President Kamala Harris raised nearly $1 billion for her campaign alone.
The report by AdImpact, an advertising analytics firm, states that the pace of spending in the election was largely defined by Biden’s historic decision to drop out of the race at such a late date.