Research Memo #6: Political Advertising
Taylor Owen, Peter Loewen, Derek Ruths, Aengus Bridgman, Laura Edelson, Robert Gorwa, Divam Jain, Stephanie MacLellan, Damon McCoy, Eric Merkley, Andrew Potter, Beata Skazinetsky, Ratnam Srivastava & Oleg Zhilin
October 2019
KEY FINDINGS
FACEBOOK ELECTION ADS
The Liberal Party outspent the Conservatives on Facebook. They also chose morenarrowly targeted ads compared to the Conservatives’ “broadcasting”-style strategy.
The highest-spending partisan third-party group, by far, was Canada Proud.
Troublingly, we found at least two advertisers purporting to show “fact checks” that were actually partisan advertisements.
SURVEY
Canadians do not seem to prefer positive ads to negative ads. Negative ads do drive up negative perceptions of the party that is targeted, but also of the party that pays for the ads.
Positive political ads appear to reduce affective polarization—dislike of parties or their supporterson the other end of the political spectrum simply because they belong to an opposing group.
This is the sixth report from the Digital Democracy Project, a partnership between the Public Policy Forum and the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. The project uses data from both public opinion polling and online media analysis to examine the media habits of the broader Canadian public as well as the political and journalistic class, with an eye to understanding the various relationships between media use, partisanship, political knowledge, and concern over policy issues.
