As the 2024 presidential election concluded, the flood of campaign advertisements came to a welcome halt for many. The election involved a surge of campaign fund; the majority of which were aired on most television networks, plastered on billboards and printed on yard signs culminating in a movement which made ignoring the election impossible.
The marketing has been ferocious, television especially, causing the election to become omnipresent in the American zeitgeist. Although an important part of the election cycle, these surges of funds often point to deeper problems with the elections held in the United States and how elections are viewed internally.
This has been facilitated through an expansive flow of money through funding organizations emerging outside of the main presidential campaigns, known as Political Action Committees (PACs) disbursing over nine billion dollars as of June 30, reported by the Federal Election Commission. This tidal wave of funding streams into the few states with the smallest margins between candidates, deemed “Swing States.” The Swing States are relatively stagnant; their indecisiveness being predictable and one of the most inconsistent has been Georgia. In the past, Georgia has been a hardline red state yet recently began shifting left. The climax of this change was when Georgia voted in favor for the democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election, the first time the state went blue since 1992 and a critical victory for Biden’s overall success in the election. As Georgia continues its trend of variability, residents are faced with a barrage of campaign ads furthering the struggle between the two parties.
As mentioned, prior, it is not hard to be aware of living in such a critical region with the massive influx of advertising and the frequency in which candidates appear on local stages. Although bringing an air of excitement and activity to swing states, those who are subject to the attention often find it a nuisance as the pressure of a national election weighs on their shoulders. In any format this is no more apparent than with the wave of campaign ads occupying all forms of media. This increased presence in swing states applies the pressure of the entire election on the few indeterminant states.
A serious issue that has emerged, as the torrent of campaign advertisements descends upon the nation, is that of false information in the content produced by the campaigns. Online websites have struggled to regulate and control falsehoods in the mass amounts of advertising they perform for the election with misinformation permeating the paid political messaging; however, this is a minor point as even national television does little to restrict what paid messaging can claim even when parroting ambiguous claims.
At a more basic level, these televised campaign ads have begun to service rhetoric more akin to a smear campaign than a presidential election. They target unseemly aspects of their candidate, often labelling them extremists hyperbolically. While the criticism present in the advertising can be grounded, some ads appear more as simple name calling than anything, using culture war rhetoric to enlist voters. Even third party candidates are not safe from the assaults and with the prevalence of the campaigning, the toxic nature of these advertisements seems to permeate the election.
While mudslinging to some capacity has been a relative norm in the U.S. election cycle and in broader politics, these kinds of attacks have reached a whole new audience when combined with the massive amounts of funding from PACs. With regards to the public opinion on money in politics, it is clear that the view of PACs are worsening and they represent something significantly more detrimental in politics. The role of corporate money in elections has only been accelerating following the legitimization of PACs by the supreme court in 2010 and the wealthy have been taking advantage by using their power with the aim of tipping the scales. This is not a foreign concept, as corporate lobbying has been influencing the functioning of the government for most of modern politics however their involvement in the election cycle seems exceptionally egregious as money continues to flow into campaign organizations.
Reaching the end of the election cycle, the stress of the reoccurring event will begin to taper off, giving an important chance for reflection. The omnipresence of campaign advertising throughout the election year points to the nefarious role money has come to play in the election cycle and the broader government largely. On a minor level, it applies further pressure to swing states, a concept which is already archaic. One of the most prevalent issues is that of rampant misinformation that seems to reside especially in PAC funded outreach projects and these operations are also the source of a high degree of toxicity that can now reach an even broader audience of the American populace. With this new level of influence, the PACs can accept mass amounts of funding allowing the wealthy to further tip the scales of the election. Campaign funding represents the way money fuels and controls the presidential elections, culminating in an egregious misrepresentation of the values of democracy in the United States.
