New Hampshire Flooded By $100 Million in Political Ads
Money is gushing into New Hampshire as presidential candidates see the first in the nation primary as a make-or-break moment for their campaigns.
About $100 million has already been poured into broadcast and cable television ads courting voters for the Feb. 9 vote, according to estimates from Kantar Media's CMAG and an analysis by Ken Goldstein, a Bloomberg Politics analyst and University of San Francisco professor. In comparison, about $2 million had been spent in New Hampshire by this point in the 2012 race that ultimately came down to Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.
The spending in New Hampshire shows how American politics is being transformed by U.S. Supreme Court decisions in recent years that cleared the path for unbridled spending in elections. The sheer number of candidates and the lack of an incumbent in the race has also intensified the flow of money.
So far, the vast majority of New Hampshire ad spending—about 80 percent as of Feb. 1—has come from the Republican candidates and outside groups supporting them, according to Goldstein. Even Donald Trump, who rode a wave of free publicity through the early months of his campaign, began TV advertising in early January, according to CMAG.
Read the rest at: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-03/new-hampshire-flooded-by-100-million-in-political-ads
= new reply since forum marked as read
