White Plains, NY (February 6, 2012) – Media Monitors released its study of political spots that were run in Minneapolis, Minnesota leading up to its primary caucuses. Media Monitors captured data for Radio, TV and Local Cable from the candidate’s campaign and the Super PACs that ran spot schedules.
All the data was collected from January 1, 2012 to February 6, 2012 in the Minneapolis Market:
On Radio, Ron Paul’s campaign ran 50 spots, while Mitt Romney’s campaign ran only one spot on the stations Media Monitors tracks. The Obama campaign ran 4 spots in the market.
On TV, the only campaign to run spots was Ron Paul with 136 from January 1 until February 6, 2012.
On Local Cable, Ron Paul’s campaign ran 169 spots, while Rick Santorum’s campaign cleared 28 spots. Mitt Romney’s campaign only ran 2 spots.
And now, let’s see what the Super PACs were up to in the Twin Cities:
Winning Our Future, the Super PAC most associated with Newt Gingrich was the player in Minneapolis during the last month. They ran a total of 221 spots, 100 of them were anti-Mitt Romney and 121 aired with a Pro Newt Gingrich message.
Super PACs on TV was a battle between the forces behind Romney and those backing Rick Santorum. The Red, White and Blue Fund ran 140 pro Santorum ads, while Restore Our Future ran 113 pro Romney spots.
The Super PACs were very active on Local Cable with Winning Our Future running 21 pro Newt Gingrich ads, while Restore Our Future ran 28 Pro Romney ads and 6 anti-Gingrich spots. Crossroads GPS, a Super PAC run by Karl Rove, ran 37 anti-Obama spots and the RNC – Republican National Committee ran 3 anti-Obama spots.
In looking at the impact of all the spots run by campaigns and Super PACs, we show here, the use of each media Radio, TV and Local Cable.
The biggest player in this market is Ron Paul with a total of 355 combined spots. Coming in second is Newt Gingrich with 242 spots. Rick Santorum has a respectable 168 spots supporting his effort, while Mitt Romney ran 150 spots.