Let’s Demystify the Power of Money in Politics

I have been writing about campaign reform for more than four decades -- and never has the outlook seemed as bleak as it does right now.

Political scientists John Sides and Lynn Vavreck closely examined the connection between early advertising in the 2012 presidential campaign and the poll ratings of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. As they explain in their book on the 2012 race, The Gamble, the impressions created by TV ads have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. Sides and Vavreck write, "We found no statistically meaningful impact of ads aired the five days before the respondents were interviewed. Only the ads aired on the day closest to the interview mattered." 

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