A Comparative Analysis of Advertising in the 2020 Presidential Elections & Phoenix Mayoral Elections using Natural Language Processing

Abstract

This language model examines advertisements used for political campaigns, specifically the 2023 Phoenix mayoral election. Political microtargeting looks at the tone of content throughout Instagram and Facebook ads during the 8 months leading up to the election. Through various processing techniques, both written and spoken language within ads was collected and used Facebook ad API, associated with a target demographic or group within the platform. This allows campaigns to send targeted messages to voters based on factors like location, media preference, associated political beliefs, age, and other critical variables. This data was then compared to a peer-reviewed study by the University of Amsterdam, that studied Facebook and Instagram ads 8 months before the 2020 US Presidential election. Media companies often offer paid advertisements to a targeted audience, and during highly polarized world events such as an election, uncivil negative ads can be pushed to groups to which the shown ideology appeals. (Votta, F.) The question posed by Votta in the comparative study was: “TO WHAT EXTENT IS POLITICAL MICROTARGETING USED BY POLITICAL ADVERTISERS TO DELIVER TOXIC CAMPAIGN MESSAGES?” To study whether this optimization was occurring, the advertisements were run through a multilevel ordinal regression(Votta [https://www.aup-online.com/content/journals/10.5117/CCR2023.1.001.VOTT] et al., 2023). They took ads from official political campaigns and compared them to third-party groups. They then analyzed the size of the desired audience and compared the size of the audience to the verbal tone of the listed advertisement. Our results indicate that while traditional media remains an important part of electoral voting, show out, and postage signs and campaign events serve a purpose in reaching a wide, unrestricted audience, social media advertising presents a valuable resource in targeting specific groups of individuals who will be most susceptible to guided advertisement. Last, we analyze the implications of our findings in the 2020 Phoenix mayoral election, how city elections differ from a presidential election, and how micro-targeted advertisements might affect voter behavior.