In his latest column for Roll Call, The Winston Group’s David Winston writes about the recent defeats of several well-funded Senate candidates in their primary races, and why this may signal that it may not be “your father’s midterms” two months from now.
From Michigan to Minnesota to Texas, we’ve seen establishment campaigns with overwhelming money advantages in advertising spending come up short. The first of these was in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary in a squeaker against Rep. Haley Stevens by roughly 1 percentage point.
When looking at what was spent on advertising for both sides, including the campaign and spending done on behalf of each candidate, there is a significant story. Advertising spending for or by El-Sayed amounted to $5.2 million, according to Kinetiq Political Insights data compiled by Axios. In contrast, for Stevens that number was $52 million.
Stevens outspent El-Sayed 10-1 in terms of advertising, the sort of margin that one would expect would produce a comfortable win, at least according to conventional political wisdom. Certainly, political news coverage tends to lean heavily on a campaign’s fundraising prowess and the size of its ad buys to influence its pronouncements on the viability and advantage of the candidate doing better in both. That was clearly not the case here.
Read the full piece here.
