There's a hot new political issue quickly popping up in ads across both parties: data centers. Last week alone, we saw 15 new broadcast creatives across 13 advertisers, and looking at July and August as a whole, that number jumps to 55 creatives across 46 advertisers. For comparison, we tracked 42 data center-focused broadcast creatives from January through June this year.
Overall, we've tracked over 15K broadcast airings amounting to $7.6M in spending on ads about data centers. While this only accounts for 0.25% of all issue-tagged spending in our ad library, it's quickly growing. We tracked 5.1K airings across 22 advertisers in July, compared to 7.1K airings and 31 advertisers so far in August.
If you're not familiar with our process, we review each ad and tag up to three political issues based on its content. Our issue library covers everything from President Donald Trump to marijuana, allowing us to track how campaign messaging shifts throughout an election cycle.
Breakout by Party
Within the Data Centers issue, Democrats make up about 73% of the estimated spending, Republicans make up about 26%, and the rest comes from Independents. Most of these ads either attack data centers directly or link opponents to their development, often tying their support to rising energy costs or environmental concerns. One recent exception is an ad from the Infrastructure Alliance of Texas, a positive spot about data centers that links their expansion to Governor Greg Abbott.
Democratic advertisers like Sherrod Brown (OH Senate), Rebecca Cooke (WI-03), Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), and Gina Hinojosa (TX Governor) got an early start attacking their Republican opponents on data centers.
"Merrin signed off on $2B more for data centers, and their massive usage is driving rates up even more...I oppose that dirty bailout, and I'll never give tax breaks for data centers."
-Marcy Kaptur campaign ad
Republicans are going on the offensive now. Stacy Garrity (PA Governor) and Tom Tiffany (WI Governor), among others, have all launched ads tying their Democratic opponent to data centers within the last two weeks.
"Data center David Crowley won't roll back data center tax incentives. Our lakes run dry, family farms paved over."
-Tom Tiffany campaign ad
Top Advertisers
The top advertisers are Sherrod Brown (OH Senate, $2.4M), Believe in Wisconsin ($926K), Paige Cognetti (PA-08, $394K), Tom Jones (PA SD-36, $369K), William Lawrence (MI-07, $345K), and Come and Take It PAC ($292K).
Brown also has the highest concentration of data center messaging, followed by American Bridge 21st Century, Assembly Accountability Project, Tom Jones (PA SD-36), Tracy Pennycuick (PA SD-24), and Wisconsin Ideas Project. Data centers appear to be a dominant theme of Brown's broadcast campaign, with three separate creatives focused on the issue.
Top Targets of Data Center Ads
All this leads to the next question: who is the top negative target of these data center ads? For ads filtered to just negative in our "Tone" field, Jon Husted (OH Senate) is the top target, with about $2M spent attacking him, about 72% of all negative data center messaging. He's followed by Luke Bronin (CT CD-1, $288K), Nate Powell (WA CD-5, $179K), and Bill Eigel (St. Charles County Executive, $100K).
Currently, Data Centers is ranked 43rd out of 78 issues for this political cycle, sandwiched between Foreign Policy and Fundraising. As we move into the busiest months of the cycle, we'll continue to monitor this issue to see how it moves up or down the chart.
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