US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has been largely overshadowed by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton and boisterous Republican candidates like Donald Trump for much of the primary election cycle. But the Vermont senator’s ads are killing it with both Democrats and Independents.
Commercials from the Sanders campaign, released over the last 180 days, dominated a list of top political ads ranked by effectiveness by ad-scoring firm Ace Metrix. The scores were based on eight metrics, including whether people enjoyed watching the ads, thought they were persuasive, agreed with the overall messages, were driven to seek more information, learned something from them, thought they were credible, found them relevant, and whether the ads grabbed their attention.
Ace Metrix scored 152 political ads released over the last six months, based on interviews with 500 national registered voters per ad. The respondent pool was evenly balanced, the company said, between those who self-identified as voting Republican, voting Democratic, and voting Independent.
Commercials produced by the Sanders campaign made up seven of the top 10 most-effective ads as determined by overall voters, because they performed well with both Democrats and Independents, the results showed.
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Democrats liked the Sanders ads because they consistently focused on increasing family income, equal pay, making college affordable, fair and reasonable health care policies, and fairness in taxation, Mark Bryant, vice president of Ace Metrix Politics, told Quartz. And Independents identified with their aspirational, anti-establishment tone, he said.