President hopefuls make $408 million ad splash on TV

The topsy-turvy game of thrones being played out in the US presidential primaries has seen $408 million spent in an all-out war of the air waves. Over 480,000 individual ad airings have been done by candidates fighting to get their party's nomination ticket, analysis of television advertisement data by the Wesleyan Media Project shows. Democrats have spent about $138 million while Republicans engaged in multicornered hand to hand combat have shelled out over twice as much, $271million in ads.

By comparison, fewer than 220,000 presidential ads had aired by this point in the 2012 cycle at an estimated cost of $120 million. But then, there were no Democratic primaries in 2012 because President Obama was the only nominee. Democrat supporting ads this time are just short of the 2008 level when Obama and Clinton were slugging it out for the party's nomination.

The Wesleyan Media Project, run at the Wesleyan University, Connecticut, US, analyzes TV advertising data collected by Kantar Media CMAG during US Presidential and Congress elections.

Surprisingly , Bernie Sanders, the Democratic Party's insurgent challenger leads the pack with nearly $74 million spent on ads compared to Clinton's $63 million and Trump's $18.5 million. Republican candidates who have dropped out of the race had spent a combined total of $116 million advertising themselves --or attacking others-before giving up.

Most of the candidates ha ve kept their own ads -commissioned and paid for from their official campaign committees -straightforward and positive, the Wesleyan analysis shows. Positive means the ads talks only about the candidate it is favoring.

Donald Trump, the New York billionaire who is now the sole surviving candidate in the Republican field has aired the least number of TV ads but has attacked others by name the most in 14%of his ads and issued contrast ads-comparing oneself to another named candidate -in 16%.

Not surprisingly the real mudslinging is taking place in ads placed by outside support groups, that is, groups not officially set up or coordinating with campaign but favoring specific candidates. According to the Wesleyan analysis, only 36%of such ads were positive.

There is weird dissonance between the three top issues focused on by the leading candidates. While Clinton is talking about women's rights, healthcare and education Sanders is waging a lonely war against Wall Street and the 1percenters, blaming them for the failing economy. On the Republican side, Trump's favored focus is immigration.