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Mary is a Senior in Economics from Richmond, VA

Introduction

According to an August registered voters survey conducted by Pew Research Center asking which topics are of most importance to Democrats and Republicans in the 2020 election, 84% of Republicans and 66% of Democrats said the economy would be a top issue when voting this year (Deane & Gramlich, 2020). On the other hand, it appears that both parties had starkly different views on how the economy has been doing since the pandemic. A survey by The Associated Press found that Americans who view the economy as “good” overwhelmingly voted for President Trump, while those who view the economy as “poor” were much more likely to cast their vote for Biden. These polarizing viewpoints on the state of the economy amid the worst pandemic since 1918 have contributed to the contrasts of the economy-related advertisements between Trump and Biden leading up to the election.

One of the most important groups that Biden needed to win back was White working-class citizens. In 2016, 23% of white working-class men voted Democrat, and in 2020, that number jumped to 28% (Williams, 2020). It may seem like a small increase, but it was enough to flip Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in Biden’s favor. From analyzing the data set of Economy ads, Biden’s campaign tactic was to focus on White working-class citizens from the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt region. This group historically votes Republican and had wide Trump support in 2016, but Joe Biden took back some of those votes. Biden’s relatability to working-class Americans in the Upper Midwest due to his upbringing in Scranton, Pennsylvania along with his consistent middle class focused messaging in his campaign ads on bringing back manufacturing jobs likely was a key reason why Biden flipped Upper Midwest counties to win the 2020 election.

Literature Review

Traditionally, “white working class” citizens are defined as whites without a college degree and report below the annual household income median of $60,000 (Carnes & Lupu, 2020). Over the past few decades, more and more white working-class citizens have voted for Republican presidential candidates. In the 2016 election, 62% of white working-class voters voted for Donald J. Trump. This indicates that Trump won the largest percentage of white working-class voters than any past Republican candidate, a noteworthy 5% increase from the 2012 election (Carnes & Lupu, 2020). A lot of researchers believe that white working-class voters, especially males, helped Trump flip three 2016 key “blue wall” states in the Rust Belt: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (Carnes & Lupu, 2020).

In 2020, however, Trump lost votes from white males by 5 percentage points. Trump did increase votes in Latinx men by 3 percentage points and in Latinx women by 3 percentage points (Vox). Trump also won 45% of the Latinx vote in Florida, mainly fueled by fear-mongering rhetoric towards Cubans and Venezuelans that voting for Biden would lead to socialism (Williams, 2020). More generally, the Trump campaign’s tactic in the 2020 election revolved around the use of fearmongering in their political advertisements. These advertisements heavily centered around the idea of Joe Biden being a socialist and that he will let the “radical left” rule the Democratic Party. However, these fear-based ads were, in part, believed by Trump supporters already. This suggests that Trump’s tactics were to persuade vulnerable swing voters to vote for Trump, showing success among Latinx voters. According to polls conducted this past summer and fall, the use of fearmongering during the Black Lives Matter movement under the Trump campaign did not appeal to most voters. The paradox of Trump’s broad derogatory statements around Black Lives Matter was not resonating with voters who viewed the pandemic and the economy as more important than the protests (Bennett, 2020). While the 2020 Campaign advertisements touch on a wide range of genres, this paper focuses on the advertisements released in the nine months leading up to the election that can be categorized under the Economy topic. More specifically, I will analyze the effectiveness of the Economy advertisements on the middle class in the Upper Midwest Rustbelt region which I believe played a significant role in Biden’s victory.

Even though the Biden campaign in the 2020 election did their fair share of fear-mongering advertisements related to the leadership and morals of the President, the Biden campaign put out many positive advertisements that reflected Biden’s plan to restore decency and provide hope in this country (also see chapter 6). More specifically, the Biden campaign’s key narrative was focusing on the middle class. Joe Biden has repeatedly stated that one of the main components in his economic plan is to restore the middle class, especially in the Rust Belt states. Born in Scranton, Pennsylvania in a middle-class family, Joe Biden uses his relatability and authenticity to his advantage in his political speeches and advertisements. Studies have shown that authenticity in a political candidate helps inform voters’ intentions when deciding who to vote for (Stiers, et al., 2019). The vast amount of economic advertisements depicting Joe Biden as a relatable, authentic, middle-class Pennsylvanian wanting to restore American manufacturing and lift the middle class helped Biden turn key states in the Upper Midwest.

Research Question and Methodology

The research question examined is the 2020 Economy ads: what are the common themes in the 2020 presidential Economy ads, and what are the key distinctions between the Trump and Biden ads?

The data set used for this study encompasses the ads on Economy, Jobs, Taxes, and Small Businesses, comprising 147 total advertisements. These ads are from various sources such as the Trump and Biden presidential campaigns, Pro-Biden and Pro-Trump Political Action Committees (PACs), and other third-party groups.

I conducted a content analysis to analyze the qualitative data in the advertisements. I conducted a first-round coding process on all the advertisements to identify common themes, topics, patterns, word usage, and structures. Next, I formulated a code sheet that appears in Figure 1 which includes the candidate positions, messaging format, theme, source, and other important variables in which I coded each advertisement in their appropriate categories.

From my first round of coding, I created six categories for the Economy ads. Each of these categories was formed based on the number of advertisements that included economic policies, personal narrative, economic statistics, candidate strategies, or candidate behavior related to these different categories. The Positions tags were based on if the ad delivered positive messaging related to the candidate or delivered negative messages towards the opponent. The Source category tags the advertisement sponsor: primary campaigns, Pro-Biden/Trump PAC, or a third-party PAC that is not related to either candidate. I included a Timeline category that shows the dates of when the ads were published or aired. The Messaging Format category relates to the type of messaging of the advertisement. These categories represent most Economy ads. I added a Geography category if the advertisement was about a specific location, talked about a specific location, or took place in a specific location. Lastly, I added a Profession category if the advertisement was specific to a type of industry or it focused on a person in a specific line of work. After creating the code sheet, I conducted a second round of coding to group each individual advertisement into each of the categories. I created an Excel spreadsheet and coded each advertisement using the code sheet as my guide, using Stata to analyze the data.

Results

In this section, I conducted various cross tabulations and Pearson’s Chi-squared statistical test to find the frequencies of the advertisements and if differentials in the number of advertisements in the different categories between Biden and Trump are statistically significant.

In Table 1, reports on the Position of Candidate and the Category of the advertisement, significance recorded as chi-squares. The frequencies suggest that by far the most common theme in the Economy advertisements are related to Leadership and Ideology. I grouped these two themes together because most of the advertisements that include the leadership qualities, or lack thereof, also include the ideologies the candidate. Some common examples from the Trump campaign are related to apprehension of Joe Biden’s drift to socialism. For example, one Trump campaign advertisement says that “Joe Biden and the socialist Democrats would immediately collapse the economy.” This idea of Joe Biden being a socialist and his threat to the economy was very common in this thematic category. On the other hand, many of Pro-Biden advertisements attack President Trump’s leadership qualities and his ability to guide the economy out of the COVID-19 related recession. The Chi-squared contributions below the frequencies show that the differences on the Middle Class is highly significant. Of the 22 ads in the Middle-Class category, 19 of them are Pro-Biden ads. This finding is important in understanding Biden’s main campaign tactic, targeting the middle class. Most of these ads relate to the middle class as being the “backbone of our nation” and that “Joe Biden will fight for middle-class families”. These advertisements include personal narratives of Michigan auto workers, the thousands of jobs lost in Good Year plants under Trump, and Biden’s economic plan to restore the middle class and supercharge American manufacturing. All 19 Middle-Class advertisements put out by pro-Biden groups all relayed similar messaging and imagery to make Joe Biden seem relatable to middle-class voters. Overall, the Chi-squared statistic is significant at the 0.001 level. We can conclude that there are significant differences between the Biden and Trump advertisements within the different categories of the advertisement.

In other findings, I calculated the candidate position in the advertisement by the ad’s source. The Lincoln Project, Meidas Touch, SEIU, and others mainly were more anti-Trump than they were Pro-Biden. Another finding to note is that there are more pro-Trump campaign ads than pro-Biden campaign ads on the Economy. However, the Pro-Biden PAC ads and third-party group’s ads make up for this difference.

I also conducted a cross-tabulation of the position of the ad and the date the ad was posted. Most of the advertisements were in the August-November timeline, showing the importance of putting out more content as the election nears. In general, the advertisements were evenly spread across different time periods indicating that economic ads remained central as the campaign unfolded.

In Table 2, I report a Chi-squared test on the Position of Candidate and the Messaging Format. The most common messaging format by far is the “Attack other candidate,” with a total Chi-squared for the category at 4.9. This category includes fear-mongering ads about the other candidate or party and other negative advertisements on the other candidate. The Pro-Trump ads had 34 advertisements in this format, compared to 21 advertisements in the Pro-Biden ads indicating the difference was statistically significant.

Another relevant finding from this table is that of the “Candidate Praise” advertisements, 25 of the 36 of them come from Pro-Biden advertisements. We can see the statistical significance again in the large Chi-squared contribution statistics. These findings suggest that a lot of the “Attack other Candidate” advertisements, which are mainly negative ads towards the opposing candidate, are Pro-Trump, and a lot of the “Candidate Praise” advertisements, which are mainly positive ads towards the candidate, are Pro-Biden. This finding confirms what articles and studies have shown regarding Trump’s heavy usage of fear-mongering scare tactics in his political advertisements surrounding Joe Biden giving in to the “radical Democrat socialists”. The Chi-squared statistic of 19.4902 is significant at the 0.002 level of significance. We can conclude that there are distinct differences between the Biden and Trump advertisements on the different messaging formats of the advertisement.

In Table 3, I look at Chi squares on the Position of Candidate and the Geography of the Advertisement. This statistical table shows the importance of the Pro-Biden advertisements targeting the Upper Midwest region in their Economy ads. Out of the 36 ads targeting the Upper Midwest, 26 of them are Pro-Biden ads. We can see the statistical significance of the difference of the number of ads in this category by the hefty Chi-square numbers of 2.8 and 2.5. Most of the advertisements targeting the Upper Midwest relate to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, three states that Biden flipped in the 2020 election. These advertisements mainly included personal narratives of middle-class citizens from these states and a heavy emphasis on restoring American manufacturing jobs in these states. These findings show the significance of targeting the Upper Midwest region for Biden’s campaign strategy. Overall, the Chi-squared is statistically significant at the 0.029 level of significance. We can conclude that there are statistically significant differences between the Biden and Trump advertisements on the targeted geographic locations of the advertisement.

Table 4 shows a statistical test on the Position of Candidate and the professions pro-trade in the advertising. Most advertisements relating to a specific profession are about manufacturing jobs. This ranges from a personal narrative of a manufacturing worker or the importance of restoring manufacturing jobs in the United States. Of the 21 ads related to manufacturing jobs, 18 of them are Pro-Biden ads. The statistical significance is clear from the Chi-square. For example, one advertisement in this category says that “Joe Biden is all about American manufacturing”. Since most of the manufacturing jobs in the United States are in the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt region, we can conclude even more that Biden’s messaging to Upper Midwestern, middle-class manufacturing workers was consistent throughout his advertising. All the 10 fracking advertisements are pro-Trump, which was Trump’s main tactic in the advertisements targeting the western Pennsylvania region. This difference in fracking ads is obviously statistically significant (at the 0.000 level). We can conclude that there are statistically significant differences between the Biden and Trump advertisements on the targeted professions of the advertisements and types of employment.[i]

Findings and Conclusion

The results presented provide evidence for my research question regarding the key differences between the Biden and Trump economy-related political advertisements. From analyzing the data, Biden’s main economic advertising tactic was to target middle class, upper Midwestern manufacturing workers. From conducting the qualitative research of watching all the economy-related advertisements, it was clear that Joe Biden had a focus on flipping middle-class voters in the Rust Belt region in the 2020 election. These advertisements were consistently made up of positive rhetoric regarding Biden’s economic plan for the middle class and for manufacturing jobs. On the other hand, the statistical tables show Trump’s main tactic of attacking the other candidate’s leadership abilities through attacking the opponent on leadership and ideology. From the data, we can confirm that Trump used more fearmongering and scare tactics in his advertisements surrounding Joe Biden’s leadership and ideology to instill fear and anxiety in swing voters. Of course, the Trump campaign and Associates also produced many ads aimed at particular groups and professions. For example, in Pennsylvania they aired numerous fracking commercials and traditional economy ads.

The stark distinctions between the tactics of the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign show the importance of what may have contributed to Biden’s election victory. Biden took back a small share of Upper Midwestern white middle-class voters, which was enough to flip Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Now that the Democratic Party has those states along with Georgia and Arizona, it is important that the Republican Party understands why Biden won in those key states if they want to stand a chance in future presidential elections. This paper gives a glimpse of the growing importance of the Upper Midwest middle-class voters in presidential elections. In a time of great division, polarization, and despair, the evidence shows that voters supported a candidate that was relatable and could restore hope to middle-class American workers.

References

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Carnes, N., & Lupu, N. (2020). The white working class and the 2016 election. Perspectives on Politics, First View. 1-18. doi:10.1017/S1537592720001267

Cineas, F., & North, A. (2020, November 7). Election results: White people make up the majority of Trump voters in 2020. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/11/7/21551364/white-trump-voters-2020

Deane, C., & Gramlich, J. (2020, November 6). 2020 election reveals two broad voting coalitions fundamentally at odds. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/06/2020-election-reveals-two-broad-voting-coalitions-fundamentally-at-odds/

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Pager, T., & Egkolfopoulou, M. (2020, September 17). Biden stresses middle class roots in plea to Pennsylvania voters. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-18/biden-stresses-middle-class-roots-in-plea-to-pennsylvania-voters

Stiers, D., Larner, J., Kenny, J., Breitenstein, S., Vallée-Dubois, F., & Lewis-Beck, M. (2019, December 9). Candidate authenticity: ‘To Thine Own Self Be True.’ Political Behavior.

Watson, K. (2020, October 1). Trump banks on fear and anxiety to motivate voters. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trumps-use-of-fear-and-anxiety-to-motivate-his-voters/

Williams, J. (2020, November 10). How Biden won back (enough of) the white working class. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-biden-won-back-enough-of-the-white-working-class