Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign has spent about $60 million on anti-Donald Trump TV ads before the GOP nominee got on the air with a $4-million ad purchase in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.
The Hill noted an NBC News analysis that said pro-Clinton ads had reached $104 million, while the total of pro-Trump ads were at around one-ninth of that number.
Republican strategist Will Ritter, co-founder of GOP ad firm Poolhouse, says that disparity endangers Trump.
"Most of the time ad-buyers are smart enough to watch where this is going and they try to at least do something to balance it out," Ritter said, reports The Hill. "We've never had a presidential campaign committing the political malpractice of not advertising at all, proportional to what their competitor is doing. I can't think of any more lopsided example."
The Hill notes that President Bill Clinton in 1996 and President Barack Obama in 2012 scored points with voters by airing ads early against their respective opponents, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney.
Clinton's approach appears to be paying off. RealClearPolitics polling average shows that she has a nationwide lead of 5.4 percentage points over Trump, and bigger leads in battleground states such as Virginia (12.8 points) and Colorado (10.8 points.)
Veteran GOP advertising creator Fred Davis said Trump's actions could be a reason for the disparity, not Clinton's ad flurry.
"I think it is actually less of a big deal than one would think. Does it have much to do with her being ahead? I don't think so. I think the bigger thing is the tremendous stumbles that the Trump campaign has endured over the past few weeks," Davis told The Hill.
Vanderbilt University professor John Geer, a political advertising specialist, said Trump's campaign speeches and social media posts work better for him than advertising.
"He says something so controversial every day that you have to cover it. It used to be that the attack ads were grist for the journalistic narrative. Now, journalistic coverage is driven just by what Trump says," Geer told The Hill.
Pennsylvania political expert Terry Madonna, a Franklin & Marshall College professor, said he did not believe anyone could win an election based on personal appearances without using advertisements. "To not use them seems almost preposterous," Madonna said.
Republicans who spoke to The Hill said Clinton has put Trump on the defensive in the TV advertising arena, despite her own shortcomings.
"She is an awful candidate and has a ton of her own weaknesses, but those have not been defined by TV advertising," Poolhouse's Ritter said. Adding that Trump's campaign must address Clinton's advertising by saying, "Hey, you might have heard that I'm a maniac who is going to destroy the world. Let me tell you my side of the story."
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