Buying Time 1998

Buying Time provides the first in-depth, comprehensive analysis and comparison of issue advocacy and more traditional campaigning. Rather than relying on self-reports, we use an exciting new data source—media tracking information generated with the help of recently developed computer technology— to examine television ads by candidates, parties and interest groups. Paid television advertising is hardly the full extent of the campaign in most states and congressional districts, but it remains the single most important and expensive component in most federal races. The facts and figures reported here go directly to many of the issues that activists and policy-makers have only been able to speculate on when discussing issue advocacy.