The DCCC recently placed millions of advertising dollars in several broadcast markets throughout the country for the upcoming 2010 congressional elections. While it may be abundantly clear in some media markets which congressional districts the DCCC’s spending correlates with, it remains to be yet determined in others. Some Designated Market Areas (DMAs) span multiple state boarders, covering several different congressional districts. This market spill-in and spill-out into different congressional districts opens the possibility for several different scenarios. Since the DCCC has not disclosed on their broadcast orders which district their spending applies to, we won’t really know until the ads air on television. In the meantime, however, we can make some educated guesses!
For example, the DCCC placed $950k in the Washington, DC broadcast market for October 2010. There are fourteen congressional districts which fall under the Washington, DC market. Below is a map of the Washington, DC broadcast market, and the congressional districts which fall under it’s broadcast area.
This map below shows each district and it’s full area spanning outside of the DC broadcast market.
Finally, the darker shaded portions of the congressional districts in this third map represent which parts of the districts fall under the DC broadcast area. As you can see, only a few of these congressional districts fall under the DC broadcast area in their entirety: VA-11, VA-08, VA-10, MD-04, MD-8 to name a few. Other districts, such as WV-01, WV-02, PA-09, and VA-06 only have one or two counties which fall under the DC market area.
So which district will receive the brunt of the DCCC’s $950k DC ad campaign in October? In this case, it makes the most sense that the DCCC would put their resources towards VA-11, where the Republican candidate Keith Fimian will challenge Gerry Connolly for the second time. The other districts in Maryland and Virginia do not appear to have any real contestants running against the incumbents. It would be extremely inefficient to place ad dollars in the DC market for PA-09, since Fulton County is the only county in PA-09 which falls into that market; the majority of the district falls into the Harrisburg-Lancaster and Johnstown-Altoona markets. Although WV-01 looks like it could be a toss-up election, it would also be an inefficient buy since most of the district falls under the Clarksburg-Weston and Wheeling-Stubenville markets.
But what about the markets in which the DCCC has placed, and it is not abundantly clear which district the buy correlates with? For example, the DCCC has also placed ad advertising schedule in the Phoenix, AZ broadcast market for October. There are a handful of Arizona districts which this could apply to – only time will tell.
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This is so informative!
Thank you Sarah for sharing your hard work with us. I look forward to hearing more from this talented blogger!
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