Pretend I'm on the Ballot: The 1% Ad Problem Oct 27

RachelOkay, so get this: Trump stood in front of a convention hall in Dallas and told supporters to pretend he's on the ballot.

JordynPretend, like a school play.

RachelWhich is a funny thing to ask of a crowd that already likes you. You'd think the pledge would be the easy part.

JordynYou'd think. Let's see who actually followed it.

RachelAnd AdImpact says only 1% of Republican ads mention him this October. Back in May, it was 47%. Oh, man, from the main character to the guy nobody invited. I'm Rachel, this is Red Flag, and Jordyn is already enjoying this too much.

JordynGuilty. Two questions are bugging me, though. Is the distancing principle or just polling?

RachelAnd what's a voter who backed him in 2024 supposed to take from it?

JordynRight, and we're grading it with a Receipt Check.

RachelOh, we are. Let's start with the pledge because the pledge was loud. NBC News counted the name drops at the Dallas convention. Speakers said Trump's name 155 times.

Jordyn155? Somebody sat there with a clicker?

RachelAnd Trump himself said it 16 times.

JordynWait, only 16? The man's not even hitting his own average. 15 speakers in the room saying it 10 times each, and the headliner is the lightweight?

RachelDude, you're doing math on a tally I just handed you.

JordynIt's a very important tally. Somebody has to hold the name count accountable.

RachelFair, but the same NBC reporting has the less funny part. It says his approval rating is at an all-time low.

JordynMm.

RachelAnd it says the party is worried about MAGA turnout, so the convention was less a victory lap and more a pep talk.

JordynA pep talk is a funny thing to need if your base is fired up. Nobody schedules one for a crowd that's definitely showing up.

RachelRight, and that's me reading between the lines, not NBC's words, but it fits the worry they reported.

JordynWhich makes the ask make sense, honestly. If your base might stay home, you tell everybody to pretend you're on the ballot.

RachelRight, and that's why I like this as a receipt. The ask was clear: put him front and center. Not a vibe, an instruction.

JordynSo nobody can say it was a mixed message.

RachelNobody. Loud, public, with a scoreboard. Which means the ads are the audit. Candidates choose every word in those 30 seconds.

JordynOh, that's cold. 155 times in Dallas, and then-

RachelWait for it. So here's the audit. What did the ads actually do? Okay, the ads. AdImpact's own post on X is the primary source here, and it's about broadcast airings. Trump showed up in 47% of Republican ad airings in May. So far in October, it's 1%.

JordynWait, I thought we'd already said those numbers.

RachelWe teased them. Now I'm reading the actual post. Different job.

JordynFine. Read away.

RachelI come from the quarterly report world, so here's my read. A metric that dropped that far in five months isn't a dip. It fell off a cliff, and nobody in the meeting is volunteering to explain the slide.

JordynSomebody's definitely blaming the intern.

RachelOr the economy. Always the economy.

JordynOkay, but the same AdImpact post has a second number, and it's my favorite. Democratic ads mentioned Trump in 21% of airings this month.

Rachel21.

Jordyn21. The Democrats are now the ones saying his name. Republicans were told to pretend he's on the ballot, and the people actually doing it are the other team.

RachelWow, free advertising for a guy his own party won't mention.

JordynImagine being the guy whose name is doing work in the other side's ads and your own side won't touch it.

RachelIt's like a product whose own sales team stopped mentioning it while the competitor keeps putting it in their pitch deck.

JordynAnd that's October to date, right? It's not a finished month.

RachelRight. AdImpact says so far. The month isn't over, so that 1% could still move a little.

JordynSure, but from 47 to 1, it's not moving back to anywhere near where it started.

RachelProbably not. Still, I'm a little wary. Airings are one way to count. One metric on a dashboard can lie to you all day.

JordynOoh, Amazon Rachel's coming out.

RachelBefore we trust one number, we should check it against a different one. Okay, dollars. Fast Company summarized a New York Times review of AdImpact data, and it says less than $1 of every 100 in Republican congressional TV spending mentioned Trump. That's September 9th through October 17th.

JordynLess than a dollar out of 100?

RachelWait for it. Democrats, about $20 per hundred.

JordynOh, man. So Democrats are spending 20 bucks on his name, and Republicans are spending change you'd find in a couch.

RachelCouch change, yes. And notice this is a different metric from the AdImpact post. That one counted share of airings. This one counts share of spending.

JordynWhich matters because a candidate could run a cheap ad with his name and a pricey one without it.

RachelRight, so the dollars could have told a different story.

JordynAnd?

RachelAnd same direction. Two different yardsticks, one conclusion.

JordynSo if you're a skeptic, you can't wave it off by saying one yardstick was rigged.

RachelRight. Two different ways of counting, and neither one lets the candidates off the hook. A cross-check that agrees is worth more than a number you only measured once.

JordynFine, but October is October. Has he always been radioactive?

RachelNope. The same Fast Company piece cites Wesleyan Media Project data, and it says more than seventy percent of Republican ads mentioned him from January twenty twenty-five to mid-June twenty twenty-six.

JordynSeventy. Seven oh.

RachelAnd it gets more physical than ads. Candidates scrubbed him from their websites.

JordynLike deleting an ex from your feed.

RachelAnd skipped Trump and Vance events.

JordynSkipped the events? Dude, that's not a mention problem. That's a calendar conflict with the president.

RachelOkay, and the raw counts make the gap even more absurd.

JordynHit me.

RachelOkay, the raw counts. A relay of The New York Times and AdImpact Analysis from National Security Journal says Republicans spent about eight hundred and thirty million dollars on ads.

JordynEight hundred and thirty million. And how many of those ads said his name?

RachelRoughly sixteen thousand. Democrats? Almost one hundred and eighty thousand.

JordynWait, say that again.

RachelSixteen thousand versus one hundred and eighty thousand. In that analysis, the party with the incumbent president mentioned him about a tenth as often as the opposition.

JordynA tenth. For the party with the president, you'd expect him to be the main character in a lot of those ads.

RachelThat's the part I keep turning over. A name you'd normally wave around is being stepped around instead, and the count suggests that's deliberate.

JordynOh, man. Okay, friendly fire time, and it hurts a little. Democrats have run the it's all Trump play with almost boring consistency. Same script, every race, every district.

RachelBoring, but disciplined.

JordynDisciplined, I'll give them that. Nobody's confused about their message.

RachelSure, but that doesn't make the Republican side any less telling. One party is repeating a name until it's wallpaper. The other is acting like the name is a smell in the room.

JordynFair. Consistency on one side doesn't excuse the vanishing act on the other.

RachelExactly, and a vanishing name raises a bigger question, Jordyn. A name is a brand. Did the agenda disappear with it?

JordynBecause candidates can drop the man and keep the policies, or the reverse.

RachelAnd a Reuters review has an answer. Reuters reviewed Republicans in tight midterm races, and The Detroit News ran it on October seventh. The finding is narrower than the headline. The candidates criticized or diverged from Trump on individual issues. They did not repudiate the broader agenda.

JordynHuh. So a break, but a small one.

RachelA policy-sized break. Nobody stood up and said the whole thing was a mistake.

JordynOkay, but is that cowardice? If I'm in a swing seat and I tell voters I disagree with him on one thing, that takes some nerve. Or is it a carve out?

RachelOh, a carve out. Very brave. You pick the issue where your district already disagrees with him, you say so, and you keep the rest of the package.

JordynWait, you're assuming the issue is always the poll-tested one. Some of these people might actually hold the view.

RachelMight, and I'd love to see one where it cost them something.

JordynFair, but even a calculated break is still a break. He told them to act like he's on the ballot, and they're saying no on specific points. That's not nothing.

RachelSure. Just don't call it rebellion when the agenda is still sitting there untouched.

JordynThough, to be fair, rebellion is a high bar. Most politicians would call this just disagreeing in public.

RachelWhich is fine if that's the label. The trouble is when it sounds like independence, and the review says it's issue by issue.

JordynHmm. So we can't tell courage from calculation from a review like this.

RachelNot from the summary, no. But Jordyn, you'll like this next part.

JordynOh?

RachelOkay, so get this. There's one break we can actually pin to a specific ad.

JordynNow you've got me.

RachelThe ad is from Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, October tenth. It criticizes Trump's trade conflict with Canada as hurting Michigan's economy.

JordynHold on. Michigan, the state where half the car parts cross a border before they become a car?

RachelI can't back up that stat, so I'm not saying it. What I can say is the National Security Journal, relaying The New York Times and AdImpact analysis, gives this ad as its concrete example of a policy break.

JordynSo not a vibe, an ad.

RachelAn ad with a date.

JordynAnd it's a Senate nominee, not some backbencher nobody's heard of. That's a top-of-the-ticket candidate saying it.

RachelRight, and it's the Republican nominee criticizing the president's trade fight on a specific economic point. That's about as concrete as these breaks get.

JordynOkay, and then?

RachelAnd then, get this, CNN's live coverage, published October twenty-fifth, says Trump is campaigning for Rogers in Michigan.

JordynWait, for him? The Canada guy?

RachelFor him, a day after Obama held his own rally in the state.

JordynOh, man. Michigan that weekend is basically a rally buffet.

RachelAll you can eat, two courses, opposite menus.

JordynSo the candidate who ran against Trump's Canada fight is the one Trump flew in to help. That's a strange handshake.

RachelIt is, and I'll be plain about the limit here. We don't know what Rogers said at the rally. CNN's summary doesn't tell us, and I'm not gonna guess.

JordynFair, but the question is sitting right there. Is this a truce or a trade?

RachelMeaning? Truce. Trump shrugs off the ad because a Senate seat is a Senate seat. Trade: Rogers gets the visit, Trump gets the loyalty, and the Canada criticism stays in the commercial where it can't bother anybody. Or neither. Maybe Trump just wants the seat and doesn't watch local TV.

JordynSure. The most famous TV watcher in America.

RachelOkay, that one lands. Either way, Canada is the one with a receipt. The others on the list take a little more honesty.

JordynBecause we don't have the ad.

RachelOkay, so the brief for this episode lists four breaks: Iran, Canada, data centers, ICE. Swing seat Republicans splitting with him on those four and going quiet on everything else.

JordynFour, and we've got one with a receipt.

RachelOne. Canada. A specific ad, a specific race. So what about the other three? Honest answer? The brief names them. That's it. I don't have an ad, a vote, or a statement for any of them in front of me.

JordynOh, man. So Iran is just a word on a page?

RachelA word on a page. Same for data centers and ICE.

JordynI'm not gonna invent a candidate and give him spine. That's the kind of thing we'd roast somebody else for.

RachelRight. And what they stayed quiet on is the same problem. Silence is hard to document because you can't cite an ad that never ran.

JordynWait, so we can't even say what the quiet looks like?

RachelNot from what we've got. The documented break is one ad about trade, plus the Reuters pattern of issue-by-issue splits.

JordynFine. Then let's use what we do have: a trade ad, a rally appearance, and a pile of carve-outs.

RachelWhich brings us to the question you came for. Is that principle or is it polling? Okay, so if every break is issue by issue and the agenda stays intact, that reads like targeted polling to me. Pick the one topic your district hates, leave the rest alone.

JordynHold on. Canada isn't a poll question. It's a grocery and factory question. A break over a real local cost can be principle and polling at once.

RachelBoth?

JordynBoth. A candidate can care about Michigan jobs and also know Michigan hates the tariffs. Those aren't enemies.

RachelConvenient. Every politician's conscience happens to match the cross tabs.

JordynJordyn, that's a cheap shot.

RachelIt's a cheap shot with a point. If the principle only shows up where the polling does, I'm calling it polling with good manners.

JordynAnd I'm calling it a floor. Not a ceiling, a floor.

RachelFine. We disagree. Now, the other side deserves a hearing. A Washington Examiner piece, a right-leaning take, argues the "pretend I'm on the ballot" appeal makes strategic sense.

JordynWait, really? That line got roasted.

RachelIt did, and the piece admits it was widely mocked, but the Examiner's argument leans on research about low-propensity voters turning out.

JordynMeaning people who don't normally vote but show up for him.

RachelRight. Make it about Trump, and you might get them to the polls. It's not a crazy theory. If your coalition has people who only show up for one name, you'd want that name in the room.

JordynSure, as strategy. I'm only saying it sits awkwardly next to an ad budget that leaves the name out.

RachelOkay, that's a real argument.

JordynBut then why are the ads hiding him?

RachelExactly the tension. NBC's Dallas reporting noted the party worries about MAGA turnout, so the message is "show up for him" while the ads quietly leave him out.

JordynTwo instructions pulling opposite ways: loyalty on the stage, witness protection on the airwaves.

RachelSomebody's voter's getting mixed signals.

JordynWhich brings us to the person who actually cast a ballot for him.

RachelOkay, so a voter in Michigan's Ninth District. The Washington Examiner piece notes Trump won that district by thirty-two points in twenty-twenty-four.

JordynThirty-two. That's not a squeaker.

RachelNope. Those are people who backed him with real enthusiasm, and now they're flipping on the TV.

JordynAnd hearing about everything except him. Oh, man.

RachelRadio silence from the guy they voted for.

JordynAnd that's what gets me. If you backed him by that kind of margin, you'd expect the candidate to at least acknowledge it.

RachelYou'd expect it. Fair or not, the ads are what most voters see, so the silence is the message.

JordynSo what's that voter supposed to take from it? The brief's angle is blunt. The candidates who wanted his endorsement in the spring are now trying to hide it.

Rachel"Hide" is a strong word for a website edit.

JordynIs it, though? Spring, you want the endorsement framed on the wall. October, you want it in a drawer.

RachelWait, so the takeaway is...

JordynThe endorsement was an asset in the spring and a liability now. The candidates themselves are telling you that just by what they stopped saying.

RachelMm. Okay, I'll give you that. The ad budget is a confession.

JordynA confession with a media buy.

RachelBut I don't think the voter should grade the ad. Ads are written by consultants. Nobody's soul is in a thirty-second spot.

JordynSo what do they grade?

RachelThe record. What did this person vote for? What did they say when it cost them something? What did they do in the room? The honest answer is vote on that, not on whether his name made the script.

JordynEven if the record is thin?

RachelEspecially then. Thin is information.

JordynSo the receipt matters more than the commercial.

RachelAlways. Nobody ever checked a commercial against a bank statement.

JordynFine. We've got the ads, the counts, the Canada ad, and a voter squinting at all of it. Time to grade it.

RachelOkay, grade time. I'm giving the loyalty pledge a D. The pledge said put him front and center, and the ads did the opposite. Harsh.

JordynI'm going C-minus because some of these candidates did break with him on a real kitchen table issue.

RachelA C-minus with an asterisk the size of Michigan.

JordynFair.

RachelAnd to be fair to you, the kitchen table break is the best thing on the ledger. It's just one entry against a whole column of ads that went the other way.

JordynI'll take best thing on the ledger. I'll frame it.

RachelAnd the asterisk matters because that October number is a snapshot. AdImpact's post said Trump showed up in 1% so far in October, not a final tally.

JordynWait, so it could move?

RachelIt could. We're recording on October 27th, and the month isn't over. I'd bet the rounding doesn't rescue anybody, but I'm not going to pretend I've seen the final count.

JordynSame goes for the bigger question. Who won? Who lost? Whether hiding him worked.

RachelNo idea. Nobody does yet. The votes aren't in.

JordynWhich is annoying because I'd love to be smug about it.

RachelYou can be smug later. Schedule it.

JordynAlready on the calendar. So we grade the pledge, not the results.

RachelRight. Whether the hiding pays off is a separate exam, and it hasn't been handed out.

JordynSo what's the one thing a listener should carry out of here?

RachelThat a name disappearing from ads isn't the same as a candidate changing positions. Watch what they do, not what the commercial says.

JordynOkay, so that's the audit.

RachelDone. Here's where to find us. Okay, so one last ask, and it's a small one. Think of the friend who's been biting their tongue since the summer, the one already rehearsing Thanksgiving silence over the mashed potatoes.

JordynOh, I know exactly who mine is. He nods at the turkey like it's a hostage negotiation.

RachelSend them this episode. Give them something to say besides "Pass the rolls."

JordynHonestly, it might start a better conversation than the football game does.

RachelLow bar, but yes. Bring the receipts and maybe leave the gravy out of it.

JordynAnd subscribe if you haven't. Leave a rating too. It takes 10 seconds, and it tells the algorithm two people with strong opinions and weak impulse control are doing something right.

RachelGuilty on both.

JordynWe're not calling anything, just two people with a spreadsheet and a snack.

RachelRachel signing off, or whoever's on the ballot.

JordynWait, I'm Jordyn, and that 1%, I'll be thinking about it every time a commercial break comes on.

RachelSame. Go vote.