We have a new batch of US mid-term ads that have been run through the Roy Morgan Reactor audience response testing (using US citizens and with the technology deployed online) – giving some pretty interesting results, especially by party breakdown. Looking at the latest batch of ads, they’re all “Vote for me! Vote for me!” type stuff coming from the following candidates:

  • Bobby Bright, Democrat, Alabama’s 2nd Congressional district
  • Bill Owens, Democrat, New York’s 23rd Congressional district
  • Jim Marshall, Democrat, Georgia 8th Congressional district
  • Chet Edwards, Democrat, Texas 17th Congressional district.
  • Cedric Richmond, Democrat, Louisiana 2nd Congressional district
  • Blanche Lincoln, Democrat, Senate, Arkansas
  • Christine O’Donnell, Republican, Senate, Delaware

What is really interesting, especially from an Australian perspective,  is that the first four Democratic candidates are effectively running as Republicans or independent conservatives in spirit if not name, with all of them deliberately bagging Nanci Pelosi and hawking their various conservative wares (NRA membership, Chamber of Commerce endorsements etc) – the Jim Marshall one had me giggling away. As one would expect, they receive more positive responses from Republican voters than Democrat ones. It goes to show just how different US politics is compared to our own.

Like last time, you can see the ads and their audience response broken down into three cohort types:

By Party

By Gender

By Age

The whole set of ads run to just over 4 minutes.

As an aside, with the last two ads from Christine O’Donnell – who has had a rather controversial history of late – do you reckon that sort of vapid personalised cliche-as-advertising would ever work for a female candidate in Australia? Well, assuming you didn’t start it like O’Donnell did with the line “I’m not a witch”.