Koch brothers might as well be lighting their money on fire.
From the
Live Elections Digest:
10:12 AM PT: WV-03: An Anzalone Liszt Grove internal from Rep. Nick Rahall's campaign, obtained by The Hill, is now the third straight poll to show strong numbers for the Democrat. ALG finds Rahall up 53-39 on Republican state Sen. Evan Jenkins, similar to the 52-40 Rahall edge that Garin Hart Yang posted last month, and not far off DFM Research's 48-39 lead for Rahall a few weeks ago. Rahall also sports a 56-39 favorability rating, which is pretty remarkable given the onslaught in Koch ads he's faced. (Jenkins, meanwhile, stands at an even 25-25.)
Regular readers know that I no longer believe that outside spending on negative ads has much impact on the race. I discuss the issue vis a vis Sen. Sherrod Brown
here, the current Senate race in Michigan
here and the overall Senate battleground
here.
In short, negative attack ads are designed to damage a candidate's favorability ratings. That's it. An unpopular George W. Bush won re-election in 2004 by making John Kerry even more unpopular than he was. But in recent times, the tactic is objectively not working. The targets are not bleeding favorabilities. People are tuning out those ads, or fast-forwarding past them, or watching Netflix, or otherwise ignoring them. Maybe we are so stratified between the two teams (Dems and GOPers) that no ad will change any minds, at least not in a general election (primaries are a whole other ball of wax).
However, my theory only applied to presidential and Senate races, where the candidates were known well enough to withstand negative rebranding efforts. The House? There simply isn't enough data to suggest things one way or another. But that polling from WV-03 sure is suggestive.
By December 2013, Rahall was facing over $350,000 in attack ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the conservative American Energy Alliance. By February, the Koch brothers had dumped another $250,000 against him. By late April, Koch spending in the race had exceeded $1 million.
Yet despite the onslaught in this inexpensive media market in one of the redder districts held by a Democrat (PVI R+6), Rahall's favorables appear unscathed, sporting a comfortable lead over his Republican opponent.
It's just one data point, sure, but one that suggests once again that all that outside money isn't as scary as we once thought.