MoveOn’s Best Performing Ad is on Climate

Emily Atkin in Heated:

Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election in part because people didn’t vote.About 40 percent of voting-eligible Americans did not cast a ballot in the 2016 race. Almost half of those 2016 nonvoters were nonwhite, and about two-thirds were people under the age 50. Those are demographics that far more likely to vote Democratic. The outcome probably would have been different had they voted.

A big reason for voter non-participation is politically-motivated voter suppression. But another is a general lack of enthusiasm. That’s why, in the lead-up to Decision Day, progressive organizations have been spending millions on ads that to inspire the 2016 non-voting crowd to get to the polls. And they’ve been analyzing those ads in the hopes of answering an essential question: What works? What actually fires people up enough to increase their likelihood to participate in the election?

The progressive group MoveOn is one of those organizations doing such analysis—and they shared their results with HEATED. Right now, the Democratic-aligned group is in process of running a $770,000 get-out-the-vote ad campaign on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other sites, targeted specifically to non-white voters under age 35 in 14 different battleground states. 

There are 24 different ad spots in MoveOn’s campaign, each focusing on a different issue. But in terms of driving voter enthusiasm, one ad is doing much better than all the others.

It’s a clip of Joe Biden talking about climate change.(above)