Ex-Clinton advisor & holdco CEO Mark Penn decodes campaign tactics as voters hit the polls

The final days of a high-stakes contest often unleash a wave of urgent advertising, as both campaigns vie to sway undecided voters and shore up support in crucial regions. In the week between October 26 and November 2 alone, almost $1bn was spent on political advertising, according to new data from AdImpact. Today, you’ll be hard-pressed to flip through cable channels, scroll social media or stream content on Netflix or YouTube without encountering campaign ads – especially in battleground states like Georgia, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

Now, there are fewer than 38 hours remaining in the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

To dissect both candidates’ campaign strategies and the impact of last-minute political messaging, we turn to Stagwell CEO Mark Penn. A former political consultant and pollster who advised President Bill Clinton and helmed Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Penn has in recent years voiced more pro-Trump rhetoric. He pioneered the practice of microtargeting – employing sophisticated data analysis to segment voters – in political advertising, and he is among the country’s leading political advertising experts.

This interview is a condensed and edited compilation from two separate conversations with Mark Penn.

Polling is still neck and neck in most of the battleground states. Do you believe that ad saturation at this point helps to reinforce loyalty, or can it still effectively sway undecided or swing voters?

The die is largely cast. I wouldn’t expect a lot of voters – absent some event that happens in the next day or so – to be switching their votes. I don’t think there are a lot of undecideds remaining. It’s always a frenetic race to the very end, but I think this race was probably largely decided about 10 days ago.

Have you seen any interesting media strategies or specific ads that have caught your eye during this cycle?

No. I haven’t seen anything that’s made me say, ‘Wow, that’s incredible.’

I have a test for campaigns: you have to have a slogan people can remember; you need to have a bio that represents your values; you need to have certain issues that you’re running your campaign on; you have to have a target that you’re targeting your campaign to; and you have to have a contrast with your opponent. And if you can name all five of those things in a campaign, that’s a pretty good campaign, right?

I don’t think you could name all five of those things for both of these candidacies.

Trump’s got a slogan – perhaps the greatest slogan written in many years in politics. And he’s just kept it right through three elections, so he’s gotten a lot of use out of that. [Harris] doesn’t have a slogan that anybody remembers. Trump, as an incumbent, doesn’t run on bio [other than], ‘I’m a former president; I did a good job.’ She has, ‘I’m from a middle class family,’ so I think she's rolled out her bio. Obviously, Trump’s got more clarity on issues. Particularly, he’s been running on immigration, and to some extent, the economy. And she’s a little cloudier on exactly which issues she’s running. They have both targeted their bases more so than the swing voters. And as far as their contrast, they’ve actually [tried to define themselves in opposition to one another]. You know, [she says], ‘He’s a threat to democracy,’ and he says, ‘She’s a communist.’

I don’t think they’ve quite hit the full mark.

In the final hours of this campaign, how would you assess the efficacy of negative versus positive messaging?

I wish the campaigns had done more positive messaging – they’ve gotten so negative. And obviously, neither campaign gave what I’m used to, which is a series of speeches on all the major issues. They gave one or two speeches on the economy. I don’t think anyone gave a really effective foreign policy speech. I would have liked to have seen more positive [messaging]. It should be a balanced approach. You also have to be careful with negative [messaging], as it has to pass the test of credibility. Is all the negative being thrown about as red meat for their followers, or is it really convincing the voters?

If I were on the Trump side, it could have been a lot more effective to use the job report [indicating that the US added just 12,000 jobs in October]... going into the last weekend. And Harris getting the [press] spin of closing positive, while she has been consistently negative on Trump. So, it’s a mixed bag, but I do think each campaign could have done a stronger job on their positives.

From a storytelling perspective, my understanding is that the Harris campaign has focused a lot on two things: introducing her as the Democratic candidate when she replaced Biden at the beginning of her campaign, and then trying to address some of her vulnerabilities, like border security and the economy. Trump, of course, didn’t have the hurdle of needing to introduce himself. His messaging appears to have focused more on attacking Harris’ positions. Is that fair to say? And can you rate the efficacy of these strategies on the whole?

I would say it’s not fair to say. Trump’s favorable [rating] is at the highest it’s ever been. If we were to go back to 2016 or 2020, his favorables were at about 35%, and in most polls [today] he’s running around 47%. Some of the events he did – particularly the McDonald’s [stunt where he worked the drive-thru] and where he did three-hour sit-down interviews were really meant to enhance his personal image. And I think he was successful at that.

I think Harris has run a successful image campaign [as well]. Her favorability is within a point of Trump’s – up from when she was [not a presidential candidate but only] Vice President, when it was 38%. She generally has shown that she has the right temperament to be president. We’ve seen them both run image campaigns.

In, say, the Hillary [Clinton] race in 2016, 65% of the people disliked both candidates, and that’s really not the situation today. Today, people like one of the two candidates. They do actually like who they’re voting for.

The vast majority of advertising investment in this race, on both sides of the aisle, has gone to traditional linear TV. Why might that be? Why haven’t more of those dollars moved into digital or social?

Voters are generally older, first of all, [so a campaign is more likely to reach them on linear TV]. And let me just say that they have moved a lot of dollars. It used to be almost exclusively TV and radio, and I think the budgets now are approaching closer to a 50-50 [split]. But there still is a belief that linear TV… delivers a good listening, spontaneous audience for political [ads]. It’s one of the biggest bright spots that linear TV has: it can deliver, typically speaking, an emotional message.

There’s no reason that connected TV won’t closely follow as a medium. The other mediums are used more for targeting, as opposed to reaching out for swing voters. Linear TV is generally more about swing voters, and generally will be more related to news adjacencies and sporting events. The Trump people have targeted a lot of football events.

You helped to pioneer microtargeting in the world of politics. In your view, what is the state of targeting today?

The targeting can only be as good as the polling, because you really have to know who to target. I don’t think people realize that political targeting was always way ahead [of the sophistication of commercial advertising]. We always had lists. We always had voters’ [data]. In the old days, we called them. Today, we get information against an ID graph [that indicates] who they are. So the state of targeting is pretty good. At the end of the day, every person is targeted for contributions or votes, if you’re in the swing states.

The question is whether [the campaigns have] targeted the right people or not, because maybe they have spent so much targeting the younger vote that they neglected to spend adequate time on the older vote. That’s something we’ll learn [November 5].

While accurate targeting relies on polling, polling itself is an imperfect instrument, right? Why is polling so difficult?

Polling is a microscope that can only see within a certain range. And if the reality is 60-40, polling is pretty easy. If the reality is 50-50, and you hang on 48-52 and you hang on 52-48, polling really can’t do better than that. At a certain point, polling just says, ‘You know what, this is going to be a competitive race. I can’t tell you who’s going to win.’

In CTV and OTT environments, there are still targeting and measurement limitations. So, for someone like me, who doesn’t live in a swing state, why might I be getting a political ad that’s not relevant for me on a streaming platform?

It could be Russian disinformation (laughs). I mean, targeting is not perfect. We could think that you live in a swing state when you don’t live in a swing state, or marketers could think you’re in the wrong place. Mostly, you should be targeted for fundraising [if you don’t live in a swing state]. That’s what you would expect. If you’re getting targets for votes, it could be because a local candidate is interested in your vote, and there’s a local race that’s relatively close.

How has the mix of small-donor versus big-donor contributions in this race impacted the advertising strategies of each campaign?

You have to bear in mind that the Harris campaign has about 50% more funding. It’s very funny – when we ask the question in the polls, ‘Who are the billionaires supporting?,’ [respondents] think they’re all supporting Trump, when Harris has her own sufficient cadre.

There’s no question that both of these campaigns have full funding to get their message across, and at a certain point, the rest of the funding has diminished impact because they reach a diminishing margin of returns. But I think most voters don’t realize that Harris has substantially more funds.

I’m glad you mentioned billionaires, because I wanted to ask about Elon Musk. Historically, uber rich donors and supporters have taken a much quieter, behind-the-scenes approach to exerting influence. Musk, on the other hand, has taken a really ostentatious approach, appearing on the campaign trail with Trump and sharing right-wing talking points on X. In the future, do you think we’re going to see more brash, Musk-style political advocacy among billionaires?

Elon Musk is original in many ways, and I don’t think that a lot of people will be copying [his style]. I think Musk gives Trump credibility in a number of ways. And I think [his approach] will continue to be highly unusual.

[In this race] you’ve seen Hollywood get into the act, too, and we don’t know how effective that is. I generally think that Hollywood actors and actresses are not a great plus, but I think the Harris campaign believes a popular culture campaign will be successful.

You said that you believe the race is largely decided at this moment, but looking back, what else could either candidate have done differently in the campaigning process to improve their chances?

Look, I think these are two good campaigns. Harris made a strategic decision not to go too deep into policy because it would split up what she sees as a vote that is largely anti-Trump. And Trump continues to move the Republican party into a working-class party, as opposed to what it formerly was – a more business elite party. And the business elite seem to have moved largely over to the Democratic party. Underneath the surface here, there are some tectonic plates that are being shifted around that each campaign has done a pretty good job on. We’ll find out who’s done the better job in the next day or so.

Who is going to win the election?

(Jokingly) Well, I know, but I’m not going to tell you.

Are there any lessons that marketers in the private sector could glean from the political advertising and marketing that you’ve seen in this race?

Marketers in the commercial space have to evaluate whether they have solid metrics of what I call ‘having a political campaign,’ which means having a slogan that can be remembered, having a biograph or set of values that you’re associated with, having a set of issues or features that you’re really demonstrating change in… having good targeting and finally, having edged against the competition. Those are the things that a good political campaign has, and the commercial marketers have to examine their campaigns to see if they’re up to snuff.

Anything else that readers should know?

Political advertising as an art form hasn’t changed a lot. I mean, it’s gone more online, but the ads that you see on TV are not fundamentally different from the ads that I did 20 years ago. I’m always somewhat surprised by that.

Additional reporting by Gordon Young.

For more, sign up for The Drum’s daily newsletter here.