http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/upshot/insults-and-ads-how-gender-hurts-trump-but-doesnt-lift-clinton.html?_r=0Insults and Ads: How Gender Hurts Trump but Doesn’t Lift ClintonLynn Vavreck @vavreck APRIL 30, 2016
Donald Trump thinks Hillary Clinton is playing “the women’s card.” But evidence suggests that if anything is making gender a potent issue in this campaign, it’s Mr. Trump’s words, not Mrs. Clinton’s.
How do we know? New data on the emotional engagement and effectiveness of different campaign messages suggests that it’s far easier to drive down support for Mr. Trump by highlighting the derogatory things he has said about women than it is to drive up support for Mrs. Clinton by talking about her as a strong woman.
Over the last few weeks and every week between now and Election Day, John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political scientist, and I are running SpotCheck, an experiment testing the effectiveness of campaign ads. Each week, we randomly assign 1,000 people to see one of two campaign ads, both ads or an ad for an insurance company that is not political. Using tools provided by YouGov, G2 Analytics and SageEngage, people rate the ads in real time, revealing the moments they like and dislike. You can see the results from the weekly experiments here.
A few weeks ago, we tested two ads about gender. After Mr. Trump made comments suggesting women should be punished if they got an illegal abortion, we tested the same two ads again. The results picked up a difference in the importance of gender — both ads gained in effectiveness after his comments, though it’s also true that one was far more effective than the other in both periods tested.
The first ad in the experiment was called “Quotes” by Our Principles PAC. It showed women reading statements made by Mr. Trump about women. It’s an attack ad, and it packs a punch. In it, women read comments like “fat pig” and “that must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmhK8G--7cReal Quotes from Donald Trump About Women (2016 Super PAC Ad) Video by Rabinowitz Shekelstein
More people reacted to this ad emotionally than to most of the other ads we have tested, and most did not like the statements they heard. Many who saw this ad said it made them angry (83 percent) and worried (73 percent). It increased Mr. Trump’s unfavorable ratings by nearly 10 points to 64 percent relative to those who saw the ad for insurance, and it lowered his favorable rating by 12 points. Over all, the decrease in favorability and increase in unfavorable views results in a 22-point shift in opinions about Mr. Trump.
We paired “Quotes” with an ad from the Clinton campaign called “Real Life.” It features Shonda Rhimes, the writer and producer of “Scandal” and other TV hits, and three actresses who have played formidable protagonists (Viola Davis, Ellen Pompeo and Kerry Washington) talking about the attributes of their TV characters and comparing them to Mrs. Clinton. “Every day, I wake up and play a brilliant, complex, overqualified, get-it-done woman,” the actresses take turns saying. The ad goes on to say that we all can be “strong, but flawed” and “human but extraordinary.” The turning point is mid-ad: “Our characters are on television, but the real world has Hillary Clinton.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=111MTs7MGuwThis ad also got a lot of emotional reactions, but the reviews were mixed compared with the ad attacking Mr. Trump. The moment where this ad seems to go wrong is when the dialogue turns to Mrs. Clinton. At that moment, roughly half the people watching indicated they disliked what they were hearing. Hardly anyone said they liked it. The ad lowered Mrs. Clinton’s unfavorable ratings by about 10 points relative to the control group but raised her favorable ratings by only one point. Fewer than half of the people who saw the ad thought it was truthful.
Here’s another way gender plays out: The effectiveness of the ads varied depending on whether men or women were viewing the ads. This was especially true of the ad with the strong female characters. Women, on average, rated the quality of “Real Life” at 58 on a scale ranging from zero to 100. Men rated it at 50. Women also liked “Quotes” more than men, giving it an average of 57 relative to men’s 49.
The attack on Mr. Trump was also more effective with women than it was with men when we compare the ratings with a similar group that did not see these ads. Mr. Trump’s unfavorable ratings among women who saw the attack ad went up by 19 points relative to those who did not see it — to a high of 70 percent unfavorable. Among men, this shift was 1 point. Both groups lowered their favorable ratings of Mr. Trump, too — women by 15 points and men by 9.
Mrs. Clinton’s promotional ad did not exhibit such remarkable gender differences. Among both men and women who saw the ad, favorability ratings of her increased by a point compared with those who did not see the ad. Her unfavorable numbers decreased by only single digits across both genders.
Over all, “Real Life” didn’t do much to help Mrs. Clinton out, while “Quotes” did a lot to drive down opinions of Mr. Trump.
When men and women react differently to messages about the candidates, the candidate paying the price appears to be Mr. Trump. It seems the costs are coming from his own comments on women, not anything Mrs. Clinton may have said or done to play the women’s card.
