US Politics / Ari Last / 29 October 2008 /

With the Presidential Election reaching fever pitch, the Obama campaign is spending big with lengthy infomercials tonight. What's the likely impact? Ari Last tells all...

Throughout this election campaign, Barack Obama has lauded his noble promise, if elected, to "spread the wealth". Yet as America prepares to watch the democratic candidate's astronomically expensive, thirty minute TV advert tonight, the irony of Obama benefiting profusely from a large concentration of wealth accumulated in his corner, is abundantly clear.

Not since billionaire candidate Ross Perot paid a small fortune for eleven half an hour ads back in 1992 has a candidate, to this extent, taken the opportunity to disrupt prime time television schedules in order to get his point across.

Obama's "infomercials", which will be aired tonight on Fox, CBS and NBC could cost him up to three million pounds, yet even the most prudent of the party's accountants would agree that this would be money well spent if the tactic secures Obama's ascendency to the Oval Office.

With less than a week to go until America goes to the polls and with pockets whose depths seem to know no bounds, the opportunity to grab centre stage as millions of Americans tune in for the night has proved too hard to resist.

Yet there is a feeling that the strategy could prove to be a rather expensive failure. First and foremost, people don't like their TV schedules being disrupted. Intriguingly one of the broadcasts being put on hold is the baseball World Series encounter between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies.

With Pennsylvania being such a key State, some are questioning the wisdom of inconveniencing, even angering, scores of the state's sports fans who could be rather irritated at having to wait an extra half an hour to see their team in action.

It may seem trivial, yet in the run up to the election small details can carry huge significance and upsetting any as of yet undecided voters, could alter their decision making process, even on a subconscious level.

The idea of Obama losing votes due to him wreaking havoc with the TV guide may seem farfetched, but a more realistic reason for democrats to be sceptical over tonight's ploy is that a scripted, rehearsed, and ultimately long address at a time when people are looking to unwind after a day's work could come across as intrusive and overbearing.

Furthermore, as mentioned above, simultaneously taking over the TV airwaves flagrantly highlights Obama's greater spending power when compared to his rival John McCain, and this could again sway undecided voters who may start to become convinced that their positive feelings towards Obama have been fuelled more from intense exposure then sincere agreement of ideas and beliefs.

Having said all that, if one was to bet on the adverts' effect on voters being positive or negative, you'd certainly be inclined to back the former, yet with a healthy lead in the polls and with a gift of enthralling captivated crowds, perhaps Obama's resources and time would have been better spent on the streets, hitting the hearts and minds of voters in the flesh.

Obama remains a strong favourite on Betfair at [1.14]. Similarly, he is heavily odds-on in Pennsylvania at [1.09]. Whether or not tonight's TV time will have any impact on those prices remains to be seen.

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