LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — We all know it wasn’t easy to escape election ads on TV, on your drive to work, and in your mailbox over the past few months.
Some of you may have read those mailers and others may have just quickly tossed them. So, when the election is over, are these ads effective?
A few locals said they felt inundated by the non-stop advertising.
“For me it was Pandora, every other song was advertisement. And it’s like, you just get frustrated with some of the lies," said Luis Olmos, Las Vegas resident.
It was too much. It was way too much. There were a couple of days there that they came wrapped up in rubber bands, and it was just it was nonsense. It went straight to the trash. Imagine every household grabbing as many chunks as we got.
To learn more about the volume, I spoke with political strategist Bradley Mayer, who helps manage campaigns at Argentum Partners.
“The efficiency in which we target direct mail programs, for example, is very high. We are not mailing to voters who aren’t going to vote,” Mayer said.
He said it's a sophisticated system that determines who gets what in the mail, even though it might not seem that way.
"It's extremely sophisticated. Nothing reaches you by accident in a campaign, right? Everything is backed by data and science and targeting, and that is how every campaign is built, and so there is a ton of thought that goes into it. They're not wasted communications, and a lot of campaigns have very few options in which to communicate based on the budget, and that is one of them. And there's not a single campaign that I know that does not do direct mail."
At the end of last week, Channel 13 first heard the frustrations of residents who want these campaign signs gone now that the votes have been cast:
When asked about the number of how many mailers likely go out throughout Las Vegas, the estimate was high.
“I would put the number in the tens of millions," Mayer said.
Although that may seem like a lot, it makes a difference to local campaigns with limited budgets and top-of-the-ticket campaigns with budgets in the millions.
You can absolutely see the numbers move based on it. For example, statewide, there are 950,000 mailboxes that you would target for a presidential turnout cycle, which really represents 1.4 million voters, which is about what the turnout was.
Nevada's strategy was pretty effective if that was the case. According to Silver State Election Results, the total turnout in Nevada was 1,482,296, or about 72% of registered voters.
But a lot of paper and the millions of flyers and signage from this election cycle will go to waste.
I contacted Republic Services and found out that political mailers can be recycled; however, yard signs can’t and will need to go to the landfill.
Opting Out
While it's very difficult to completely erase all the information that may be floating around out there, there are options if you want to make your mailbox a little less cluttered next election cycle.
If you're a registered voter in Clark County, visit their voter services website and log in. You find a tab that says make your address and telephone number confidential. Once you mail that form in or drop it off at an election center, it helps conceal your information going forward.
