I’m not sure I’m seeing how “most ads aren’t for getting people to switch sides” means “$10m of ads for one party and $8m in ads for the other is not equivalent to $2m in just one”
As ads are made to encourage people to vote, and some people are more or less concerned about voting, each addition ad dollar has a lower effect.
A hypothetical $10m in ads could get 85% of x voters, and $8m could get 70%, but $2m would get 50% and $0m would get 25%, so the 8:10m in funding would be preferential to the 0:2m.
At some point this incentive mechanism would stop working because a party receiving 0 vs a party receiving non-zero would benefit more from having money at the margin.
I’m not sure I’m seeing how “most ads aren’t for getting people to switch sides” means “$10m of ads for one party and $8m in ads for the other is not equivalent to $2m in just one”
As ads are made to encourage people to vote, and some people are more or less concerned about voting, each addition ad dollar has a lower effect.
A hypothetical $10m in ads could get 85% of x voters, and $8m could get 70%, but $2m would get 50% and $0m would get 25%, so the 8:10m in funding would be preferential to the 0:2m.
ah, yeah, that’s what I was referring to with: