Blog 6

My candidate, Ben Carson, has not run for any previous office so there is a limited amount of ads that he appears in. I only was able to find two of them on youtube. One of them is his official campaign ad where he announced he was running for president. The other is an ad against obamacare that he appears in. It is paid for by the American Legacy and says is not authorized by any candidate.

I found an article that gives light to the fact that I could not find a lot of TV ads done by Ben Carson. MSNBC posted an article on the amount each candidate has spent on TV ads and Ben Carson has spent the least on campaign ads then any another candidate. Most of the candidates spend their money on TV ads that play in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The main TV ad that I did find that is paid for by the Carson team was around 4 minutes so it covered a lot of issues and a lot of images. It is a candidate positive add and I would say that is focus more on issues than image. Ben Carson is actually not in the ad until the very end his picture comes up. He himself plays no role in the ad.

The ad starts out talking about how this point in our nation is a critical one. He then discusses the issues of: political class, the thought that we need to heal, inspire, revive, how we are more closely connected but more divided as country, we need to stop forcing people to pick sides, respect, common welfare in pursuit of life liberty and happiness, government dependency and debt, special interest groups and political elites, free expression and opportunity, working together, a leader needs to be concerned about next generation not next election, invest in next generation, protect freedom, opportunity for advancement, leave this county better off than we got it, and that he gets his strength from god.

Ben Carson's Ad for President 

There are many images in the ad that I think he is trying to use to play into this image. There are images of families, children growing up and playing, a bald eagle, the capital and thunderstorms, the globe, protests, hospitals, neighborhoods, the constitution, statue of liberty, factory workers, industrial workers, Mont Rushmore, a wedding, the American flag, a church, the statue of Abraham Lincoln, astronauts, people of all skins colors, graduation, firefighters, golden gate bridge, soldiers, wheat fields and it ends with a picture of him.

In this one ad he addresses many issues and backs it up with many images. He incorporates all the "American" images and iconic American places all around the country. I think he did a good job with this ad because it can be relatable to everyone because there is so much in it. I would like to see some more ads from Ben Carson though.

Blog #5

My candidate, Ben Carson, is polling pretty well in most polls. He is now polling around first or second place, after Trump. The story that these polls tell about my candidate is that in the beginning no one knew who he was and he worked hard to get to where he is now. 

Here in this graph Ben Carson is the red line and you can’t even find him in the crowd until late August. Polls also tell another story about my candidate.

When looking at polls in regard to who has the most money Ben Carson is not even included.

I think this says a lot about what people think about him. Even without the largest campaign and the most advertising money he is still in the lead. A Quinnipiac poll taken by 900 adults from September 26-Oct 1, when asked, "Who do you support for the Republican presidential nomination?" 24% answered Carson with Trump at 17% ********. However in the Quinnipiac polls from the Florida Republican Presidential Primary, Ohio Republican Presidential Primary, and Pennsylvania Republican Presidential Primary Trump takes the lead and Ben Carson is second.

So what do these polls really tell you? I think the most actuate thing I have read about polls is that polls don’t predict. Peter Brow, an assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute said, "The notion that a poll will tell you what's going to happen in 2016 is a ludicrous notion". A poll is only a snapshot of that specific time and things are always changing.

Yes a poll can give you a general notion of where the candidates stand but this far out it is not accurate of who is going to be president. npr posted an article about polling and it talked about early polls being the least accurate. It said, "Consider this 2011 blog post from George Washington University political scientist (and early polling critic) John Sides, in which he found that the further out from an election a poll is, the less likely respondents are to choose the eventual nominee." The article goes on the talk about that early polls a lot of times are more about name recognition and that seems like it could be a good explanation of why Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in the lead. It is too early to really tell what the candidates believe so people go off of name recognition at first. 

I think polls right now can only tell us about where the candidates stand today but I also think that all of those numbers can and will change by election time.

blog #4

I chose a clip that shows the highlights of Ben Carson during the first GOP debate. I chose this because he did not get the opportunity to talk a lot the first time so this sums up a lot of what he had to say in one clip.

Here is the clip:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AOh0_iWif0 

One thing that Ben Carson does really well in debates is that he comes across like a real person. In this debate the commentator finally called on him he made a joke about not being sure if he was going to get the chance to talk again. He also made a joke about being the only one who has taken half a brain out of someone but he said the way Washington is going he is surprised someone did not beat him to it. Ben Carson is good at making the crowd laugh and making people feel like they are talking to just a regular person.

I personally do not think he is a very strong public speaker though. He looks down and how loud his voice is goes up and down. Being a neurosurgeon most of his life I am sure he does not have the same amount of public speaking experience as the others and that is something he will get better at.

One thing I wished that he did differently is they asked him what are some things that he has done that other people haven’t and he answered with all medical examples like separating twins, operating on a baby when it is still in the mother and taking half a brain out. I wished he answered the question with more political answers. Most people know he is a doctor but most people do not know that he has done a lot of political things as well and won a lot of very important awards so I wish he gave those as examples as well.

He talked about a number of issues in these clips but I think what is something that is important for him to talk about in the debate is race. Race is an important topic right now and he gave a great example of race when he was talking about how he, as a doctor, doesn’t see race as much as other people focus on it because he operated on the insides of people and the skin color doesn’t matter and we are all the same on the inside. I think another things he should focus on is health care because he is a doctor and can speak to a lot of things that the other candidates can not speak about because they have not experienced it first hand.