By Tim Allen, Managing Editor
Gird your loins. The onslaught has begun.
If you’ve noticed more political commercials showing up on your TV, you’re not imagining things. Before long they’ll be everywhere. Your mailbox has likely begun filling with glossy campaign pieces. Text messages from candidates you’ve never met will interrupt dinner. YouTube videos will become a little harder to skip. Social media will somehow know exactly which race is most likely to irritate you.
Welcome to the next month of Oklahoma politics.
The runoff elections are less than four weeks away, and campaigns are entering the phase where money turns into messages. Candidates, political parties, political action committees and independent expenditure groups are preparing to spend millions hoping to persuade a relatively small number of voters to make one decision instead of another.
Most of us understand that’s how campaigns work. We expect candidates to tell us why they’re the right choice and why their opponents aren’t. That’s nothing new. What’s changed is the number of ways they can reach us—and the sophistication behind the effort.
A generation ago, campaigns relied on television, radio, newspapers, yard signs and mailers. Those tools are still around, but today’s campaigns have far more ways to reach voters. Television commercials are joined by digital advertising, social media, text messages, streaming video and highly targeted online outreach, allowing campaigns to compete for voters’ attention almost everywhere they look.
What this week revealed isn’t simply that campaign season has arrived. It’s that modern elections are fought as much for our attention as they are for our votes.
Campaigns don’t spend millions of dollars because candidates enjoy seeing themselves on television. They spend the money because experience has shown something simple: attention matters. Before anyone can be persuaded to vote for a candidate, they first have to notice the candidate. Every commercial, every mail piece, every digital ad and every text message is competing for a few seconds of your attention in a world where attention has become one of the hardest things to capture.
Another thing to keep in mind during campaign season: Most of us think advertising works on other people.
We like to believe we’re the exception. We imagine ourselves carefully weighing every issue while someone else is being influenced by dramatic music, carefully selected images or an emotional slogan. But if political advertising had no effect, campaigns wouldn’t keep buying it. The professionals who produce these messages aren’t operating on a hunch.
None of this means campaign advertising is inherently deceptive. Persuasion is a legitimate part of democratic politics. Candidates should make the best case they can, and voters benefit from hearing competing arguments.
Every campaign also makes choices. Which facts deserve emphasis? Which deserve less attention? Which messages are most likely to motivate voters emotionally? Every advertisement frames the discussion before we’ve had a chance to frame it for ourselves.
Politics isn’t unique. Businesses, advocacy groups and countless other organizations compete for our attention every day. Election season simply makes that competition impossible to ignore.
That’s one reason election season can feel so exhausting. We’re not simply choosing among candidates. We’re sorting through thousands of competing attempts to tell us what matters, what doesn’t, who deserves our trust and who deserves a wide berth.
So yes, gird your loins. The onslaught has begun.
Between now and Election Day, someone will spend millions of dollars trying to earn a few moments of your attention. The goal isn’t to become cynical about what you see and hear. It’s to become a more thoughtful consumer of it. Ask who paid for the message. Ask what’s missing. Ask whether it’s trying to inform you or simply make you feel something before you’ve had time to think.
Democracy depends on persuasion, but it also depends on citizens willing to pause, ask questions and decide for themselves.
