Dialogue in Political Advertising: Evidence from U.S. Political Campaigns 2012-2020

We study the nature and determinants of dialogue between political candidates in television advertising. We characterize dialogue as both candidates advertising on the same campaign theme (e.g., “Economic Policy†). We model candidates’ propensity to engage in dialogue and link race competitiveness with messaging overlap. We show that it is theoretically ambiguous whether more competitiveness increases dialogue. Using data on television advertising for U.S. House and Senate races from 2012 to 2020, we document rich heterogeneity in dialogue across races and within races over time. Candidates strategically avoid dialogue; we find that dialogue is lower than predicted by a “non-strategic†advertising benchmark. Finally, we investigate the determinants of dialogue, including race competitiveness, time until the election, and election type, separating the effects of these characteristics on selection into advertising and messaging similarity. We find that dialogue increases with competitiveness, though this effect is dominated by its impact on selection into advertising.