Pace of US Senate commercials not slacking

Roughly 1,800 commercials trying to sway opinions in the U.S. Senate campaign have aired in North Carolina since Jan. 1.

Posted 6:48 p.m. Jun 9, 2014 — Updated 4:27 p.m. Jun 10, 2014

Mark Binker

RALEIGH, N.C. — A New York Times story about ads in the Alaska U.S. Senate race caught our attention Monday:

"Political ads are ubiquitous here already. They have run on Alaska airwaves nearly 20,000 times since early last year, according to Kantar Media, a monitoring and research firm. That is more than in North Carolina (18,000), Arkansas (13,000) and Louisiana (12,000), all of which are conservative states where Republicans believe they can pick off Democratic incumbents."

Don't worry North Carolina, we're not exactly pikers in this department. Anyone who has turned on a television somewhere in the Tar Heel State recently has likely seen more than their fair share. Even after the May 6 primary, outside spending groups have kept up a steady barrage of advertising as our chart above and its interactive version shows.

WRAL News recently contracted with Kantar Media to provide information about the North Carolina U.S. Senate race. It shows that, from Jan. 1 through June 3, 17,101 individual commercial spots aired on broadcast television. Kantar fixes the cost of those spots are roughly $8 million. We'll get to 18,000, as cited in the Times story, when the next release of detailed data comes out on Tuesday.

So who is spending the money? Candidates, of course, were on the air during the primary campaign. But the big spenders thus far have been outside spending groups such as Senate Majority PAC, a group that supports Democrats, and Americans for Prosperity, which has generally supported Republican Thom Tillis. Check out the chart below or the interactive version. We'll be rolling out more insights from our Kantar Media data later in the summer.

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