ICYMI: The @NRA #BLOODmoney Placed Big Bets on the 2016 Election, and Won Almost All of Them
A few other graphs at the link also.
The NRA Placed Big Bets on the 2016 Election, and Won Almost All of Them
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/the-nra-placed-big-bets-on-the-2016-election-and-won-almost-all-of-them/
by Mike Spies and Ashley Balcerzak on November 9, 2016
In North Carolina, the NRA spent $6.2 million on the incumbent Republican Sen. Richard Burr, the most it has ever invested in a down-ballot race. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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The gun rights group placed multimillion-dollar bets on Donald Trump and six Republican Senate candidates locked in highly competitive races. It poured $50.2 million, or 96 percent of its total outside spending, into these races, and lost only one — an open seat in Nevada, vacated by the Democratic Minority Leader, Harry Reid. That race cost the NRA roughly $2.5 million.
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But the NRA’s investment, which was more than any other outside group, paid for a slew of ads that directly targeted the same voters who propelled Trump to victory. The organization’s radio and television spots sought to cast Hillary Clinton and the Democratic rivals of its preferred Senate candidates as an existential threat to the Second Amendment, and national security. It is a message that resonates in the gun belt, a swath of primarily Southern and Midwestern states where Trump achieved some of his most consequential victories.
In October alone, according to the Center for Public Integrity, roughly one out of every 20 television ads in Pennsylvania was sponsored by the NRA. That same month, the group paid for one in nine ads in North Carolina, and one of every eight in Ohio. The ads imply that Clinton and Democrats would leave law-and-order abiding citizens defenseless. In one spot, a woman is alone in bed when a burglar breaks into her home. The narrator intones, “Don’t let Hillary leave you protected with nothing but a phone.”
Trump won all three states, and the NRA’s preferred Senate candidates also swept to victory........................................
