Political Ads & Social Media: Trump, the Lincoln Project, and Campaign Financing

• In Event: Elections, Campaigns, and Social Media Mobilization

Abstract

Social media has transformed the way that campaigns communicate with voters and raise money. In this paper we explore the effectiveness of different types of appeals made to users of social media on fundraising outcomes. Specifically, we track the marketing and fundraising of two opposing campaigns: the Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, which is a joint fundraising committee founded by former President Trump, which the former president has used to raise money, and the Lincoln Project, a Super PAC established to defeat Trump in the 2020 and 2024 elections. We track the political advertisements purchased by both campaigns on Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms that maintains a comprehensive public library of political ads promoted on the platform. This data allows us to content analyze ads promoted to Facebook users and track the distribution of ads to users across the United States. We code ads specifically for the types of appeals made to users (material appeals, solidarity appeals, and ideological appeals). We assess the effectiveness of these ads by analyzing fundraising outcomes by drawing upon data reported to the Federal Election Commission. Our study illuminates the ways that campaigns have used social media marketing as a critical fundraising tool. Because social media allows campaigns to “microtarget” users with unprecedented precision, it gives campaigns a lucrative and relatively inexpensive way to raise millions of dollars. Our results imply that campaigns raise significant sums of money by appealing to users, which they subsequently use to buy more ads that appeal to users for campaign contributions.

Authors

• Alex Keena, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Amanda Wintersieck, Virginia Commonwealth University