Campaign advertising
In the European Union, many countries do not permit paid-for TV or radio advertising for fear that wealthy groups will gain control of airtime, making fair play impossible and distorting the political debate.
In his campaign for the 1948 United States presidential election, Harry S. Truman was proud of his accomplishment of shaking approximately 500,000 hands and covering 31,000 miles of ground across the nation.
But that accomplishment was soon to pale in comparison when in 1952, the 1952 United States presidential election saw a major change in how candidates reached their potential audiences.
On the other side of the fence, Catholic born John F. Kennedy created approximately 200 commercials during his campaign, but there were two that made Nixon's efforts futile.
The first was a thirty-minute commercial created from a speech he delivered in Houston, where he called for religious tolerance in response to criticism that Catholicism was incompatible with a run for the Oval Office.
In the first of four televised debates, Kennedy appeared tanned and confident in opposition to Nixon, who looked pale and uncomfortable in front of the camera.
Seventy-five million viewers watched the debates, and although Nixon was initially thought to be the natural successor to Eisenhower, the election results proved otherwise, and Kennedy was ultimately declared the winner.
[citation needed] In the 1964 United States presidential election, aggressive advertising paved the way for a landslide victory for Lyndon B. Johnson.
[2] The ad ran for under a minute and only aired once, but due to the right wing, pro-war views of Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, it resulted in a 44 to 6 state victory for Lyndon B.
His attempt proved to be too late, but his neutral style of attack ads against Nixon, featuring white text scrolling across a black background, became what is now seen as a fairly common method used in political and product advertising.
George H. W. Bush used campaign ads that ridiculed his opponent Michael Dukakis, making him appear soft on crime.
Although Michael Dukakis tried to discredit the Bush campaign in many ways, he was ultimately unsuccessful, losing to the former vice president by thirty states.
These restrictions have been justified on the basis that the ban offers a level playing field in which money interests cannot gain an unfair advantage in the political discourse of a Member State.
[8] But the Court has also held that restrictions on political advertising can be justified in certain circumstances, provided they were proportionate to the public interest they aimed to protect.
An attempted television ad campaign by the Association against Industrial Animal Production (VGT) which drew a comparison between battery farming and the Holocaust was persistently refused in line with Swiss law, and was the subject of two ECtHR cases, the second case resulting from the persistent refusal by Switzerland to modify its laws on political advertising.
It held the UK had consulted widely before legislating, the court recognized the legitimacy of limiting political advertising on television, acknowledging the argument that there was a "risk of distortion" of public debate by wealthy groups having unequal access to advertising, and accepted that the ban was not a ban on free speech given that other methods of communication were available.
Some local councils have voted to ban the placement of election posters, citing the cost of removal and the waste generated.
The Turkish Constitution reformed under coup d'état regime in 1982, contains a number of restrictions to fundamental civil and political rights directly affecting the conduct of elections.
Additionally, the committee will only consider advertisements from registered political parties or groups or organizations whose headquarter are in the National Capital Territory of Delhi.
In addition to these 2004 decisions, it was decided in 2007 that these procedures would be extended national parties for the elections in the states of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh.
One of the most recent examples of this censorship dates back to 2007, when Iran's "fundamentalist-based parliament" passed legislation that severely restricted the content and presentation of political advertising.
[27] According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the key role of broadcasters is to inform potential voters on issues, political parties and candidates during an election period.
[29] Political science research generally finds negative advertisement (which has increased over time)[30] to be ineffective both at reducing the support and turnout for the opponent.
[31] A 2021 study in the American Political Science Review found that television campaign ads do affect election outcomes, in particular in down-ballot races.
[34] According to political scientist Lynn Vavreck, "the evidence suggests that campaign ads have small effects that decay rapidly—very rapidly—but just enough of the impact accumulates to make running more advertising than your opponent seem a necessity".
[36] Direct effects of political campaign advertising include informing voters about candidates' positions and affecting the "preferences and participatory ethos of the electorate".
[40] This typically leads to higher levels of confidence within voters choices and can widen the degree of participation in the electoral process.
These unknown groups also have an advantage of seemingly having no previous associations with voters, as it does not readily reveal the leadership of the organizations to the public.
[42] Chile's president, General Augusto Pinochet, who was notorious for ordering the torture and killing of political enemies, issued a referendum in which the Chilean people could vote "yes" or "no" on the continuation of his regime.
A creative team composed of Eugenio García, Francisco Celedón, and other members of Chile's Christian Democratic Party undertook the effort to air a hard-hitting and impactful political ad campaign against Pinochet.
