I don't know if any of you out there have noticed, but the ratio of negative campaign ads to positive ads is seriously skewed to the negative. It seems to me that they're all starting to blend together, making it difficult to differentiate one candidate's ad from another.
All I do know for certain is that I'm sick and tired of it and that I'm not the only one.
Over the past few days I've tracked the total number of ads on our local TV station and those south of the border in Boston, watching about 12 hours of TV over that time. There were an average of 5 campaign ads during every commercial break. Figured 4 commercial breaks every hour that gives us a rough total of 20 ads every hour and 240 ads over the 12 hours I watched TV. Of those 240 ads, only 9 were positive ads, and then only barely positive (meaning they didn't name a specific candidate's opponent and provide negative information about them). That means out of all the ads I tracked less than 4% (3.75%, to be precise) could have been considered positive ads.
That's pretty sad.
One thing I know for sure: I'll be darned glad when November 2nd had come and gone because it means all those ads will disappear...until November of 2011, when the ads for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries will start up. And if that isn't bad enough, presidential hopefuls from both parties considering a run in 2012 will start showing up here in New Hampshire and in Iowa on or sometime shortly after November 3rd of this year.
Couldn't they at least give us a short break before starting their 2-year long bid for the Oval Office? We need time to recuperate from the campaign ad overload from the mid-term elections.
