As the 2016 campaigns continue, candidates are spending more on advertising that attacks the other candidates. But who’s getting targeted most by the negative ads?
It depends on how you measure that.
From Jan. 31-Feb. 16, Marco Rubio has been hit the hardest by negative Super PAC spending. More than $5.5 million has been spent to oppose Rubio, nearly twice as much as the second-closest candidate. Rubio may get some relief in the coming days, however. More than 60 cents of every dollar spent against Rubio came from Right to Rise, the Super PAC affiliated with Jeb Bush. With Bush dropping out, Rubio will become a bigger target from other campaigns, but they don’t have the same firepower that Bush’s Super PAC did.
In that same time span, Bush, Kasich and Trump were targeted roughly equally by negative campaign spending: Between $2.6 million-$2.8 million. Ted Cruz has been left relatively untouched, with less than $1 million spent against him. Same with Hillary Clinton. Note that money spent against Clinton generally comes from Republicans, not her Democratic competitor Bernie Sanders.
Interestingly, Trump is the only candidate to have large sums of money spent against him by independent Super PACs that aren’t affiliated with a particular candidate. Between Club for Growth Action and Our Principles PAC, almost 90 percent of the spending against Trump has come from independent Super PACs.
Keep in mind, this is only spending from Super PACs, and it includes only the 15 largest ones in the 2016 cycle. Campaigns do their own spending, but those data are harder to track.
The number of negative commercials released by Super PACs and campaigns is another way to track who’s getting targeted most often. By this metric, Trump has been targeted most often, by 16 commercials from Jan. 31-Feb. 16. More than a third of those ads have come from Cruz.
The ads targeting Rubio have come from a variety of sources: four from Bush or his Super PAC, three from Cruz or his Super PAC, three from Kasich’s Super PAC and one from the Chris Christie campaign before he dropped out of the race.
Only one commercial has attacked Clinton, and that came from Marco Rubio. Neither Clinton nor Sanders has attacked the other in a negative ad.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
