Two years ago on the eve of '04 elections the Bush/Cheney email list blasted out an email to its list demanding that their supporters turn on their answering machine to record phone calls from Democrats that would demean the troops, religious people and any other strawman that the right-wing had constructed over the last 40 years. It was a ballsy move because when that email went out the RNC and groups working to elect Bush were dumping millions of dollars into negative robocalls into districts and swing states around the country. Anyone who's ever worked a campaign knows that it's Republicans who blast sewage through phone lines hoping to depress turnout and turnoff unaffiliated Dem leaning voters.
It's a fairly easy story for the media to tell since Independent expenditures are now required to be filed every 24 hours and since every election there are isolated local reports of voters being woken up in the evening or getting a nasty call about a Democratic candidate. In 2002 we found out that they were actually using their robocalls to jam Democratic GOTV phone lines in New Hampshire. In the last few days there have been reports of malicious political phone calls around the country. The Washington post reports:
In various places, voters complained yesterday about a deluge of automated phone calls from candidates and party committees, generating at least two Federal Election Commission complaints from Democratic voters in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Some voters reported receiving up to seven calls per day, including calls in the middle of the night.
There are reports in the 6 th district of Pennsylvania, the 5 th District of Connecticut, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, South Dakota and Maryland. Below is a graph from publicly available Independent Expenditure reports from the FEC that shows the amounts of money party committees's and outside groups are spending on robocalls and other phone calls.
Here's what you're seeing.
The chart represents independent expenditures spent on phones.
Each point of the X axis represents a week.
The Light blue represents positive phone calls that Republican groups and the NRCC.
The light yellow represents negative phone calls that the NRCC and Republicans have spent money on against Democratic candidates.
The purple represents positive phone calls that the DCCC and Democratic aligned groups have spent money on.
What does it tell us?
In the coming weeks before the election Republicans are outspending Democrats on paid phone calls and robocalls by large margins.
The DCCC and Dem groups are using these phone calls to deliver a positive message about their candidates going into the election GOTV.
The NRCC and Rep groups are using negative phone calls (and these calls are often much nastier than anything else that comes on TV or in the mail) to either motivate their base (that says something about Republicans doesn't it) or they're using it to push down turnout among unaffiliated voters and Democrats that are less likely to vote in the coming election. With scattered reports that Democrats have been getting these calls it's fairly obvious that the universe of voters Republicans are targeting with deceptive and nasty phone calls is the later group. Why are they nasty? Because unlike TV and even direct mail robocalls are rarely if ever reported by news organizations because they almost always last as long the person who is receiving them has picked up the phone unless they're recorded.
Imagine if the media could wade their way through a publicly accesible database to report more than just a tiny story about a phone call in their district.
|
|
|
Permalink :: 5 Comments :: Post a Comment
|
In order to post a comment, you must be logged in. If you have a member account, please log in to comment.
If not, you can make an account right here. It's quick and free.
