We’re getting outspent, outpointed and outcommunicated

Guest post by Andy Volosky, Digital Director

Earlier this week, the Senate Leadership Fund — Senate Republicans’ official super PAC — began running ads on TV attacking Roy that they initially planned to launch in September. That might sound like a pretty standard part of a political campaign, but it’s a really big deal in our race. It means that we’re now being outspent, outpointed, and outcommunicated by the Republicans.

And it couldn’t come at a worse time: Recent polling shows that Roy’s lead has tightened to just 4 points, nearly the margin of error.

What does that all mean? Let me give you a little peek behind the curtain to explain.

Political ads are expensive

Our campaign spends as much time as we can talking to as many voters as we can: knocking doors, making calls, and putting on events. But North Carolina is a big state with a lot of voters, and we can’t be everywhere. So to make sure as many voters as possible hear Roy’s message, we buy ads, on digital platforms as well as on TV.

Digital ads are great because, as more folks spend time watching things like YouTube or Hulu, we can make sure they’re hearing from our campaign, too. It’s hard to tell how much our opponent and GOP dark-money PACs plan to spend on digital ads, but we can tell you this: they’ve spent a lot of money on them so far.

On TV, the size of an ad buy is measured in Gross Rating Points, or just “points.” Points are shorthand for how many people see your ad and how often they see it. If you buy a lot of points, a lot of people are seeing your ad, and they’re seeing it a lot.

We can beat being outspent

Often, you’ll hear a campaign say that their opponents are outspending them. That means exactly what it sounds like: their opponents are spending more money on advertising than they are. Here in North Carolina, GOP groups reserved so much advertising time that we expect they could outspend us by nearly 5:1 when all’s said and done.

But we knew that our campaign could compete against that spending advantage because of something called the lowest unit rate. When political campaigns like ours buy TV ads, they’re allowed to book that air time at the cheapest available rate. But super PACs don’t get the lowest unit rate; they have to pay more money for the same amount of air time as we would buy.

That’s how we knew we could compete: When grassroots supporters chip in to our campaign, their dollar literally goes further than the megadonor money being spent by super PACs. Cheaper ads meant we could buy more points and have money to spend elsewhere.

But now we’re being outpointed and outcommunicated, too

So the scary thing about SLF’s new TV buy isn’t that they’re outspending us. Like I said, we always planned to be outspent in this race.

What’s scary is that they’re spending so much money that they’re outpointing us, too. That means that this week, for the very first time, North Carolinians are going to see more ads attacking Roy than supporting him.

On top of that, the Supreme Court’s decision in NRSC vs. FEC means that committees like the NRSC and RNC can send as much money as they want to our opponent Michael Whatley, potentially getting cheaper ads, buying even more points in North Carolina, and saving his failing campaign.

Add that to the amount of money that Republicans are likely to spend on digital ads and the pattern is clear: Thanks to their megadonors, our opponents are outcommunicating us right now.

How we win

None of this changes our game plan. We always knew that if we were going to elect Roy Cooper, flip North Carolina blue, and flip the Senate back to Democrats, we’d do it with the support of hundreds of thousands of grassroots supporters.

But what does change is the urgency. We can’t wait until the fall to start competing. This ad buy means we need your support now, today.

If you chip in today, you can know that your money is going toward speaking to voters directly and making sure they hear Roy’s message.

If you sign up to volunteer today, you can know that you’ll be directly reaching out to the voters we need to not just win this Senate race, but to elect Democrats up and down the ballot in North Carolina.

And if you register to vote today — or get your friends in North Carolina to register to vote — you can know that you’ll have a direct hand in electing Roy Cooper and flipping the Senate back for the people.

We have 96 days until Election Day, and every one of them counts. Thank you for being a part of this team.

Andy, Digital Director

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