An Ad Analysis of the 2021 Virginia Gubernatorial Race between Glenn Youngkin and

Terry McAuliffe

Alexandra Stover

POSC / SCOM / SMAD 472: Media and Politics

04/30/2022
Part One:

Political advertising has played a pivotal role in the culture of political campaigns since

the mid-twentieth century when Dwight Eisenhower released the first political ad,

“Eisenhower Answers America.” Although this was a simple talking-head ad that seems

primitive compared to the content produced today, it catapulted the relationship between the

media and politics into a new era. Thus, as media has evolved and become a staple of everyday

life in America, so too has the presence of political advertising. According to Fowler et al., the

role of political ads has only been increasing over the years. This is shown by the fact that

there were “[n]early 5.6 million airings of election-related ads in federal races in 2020 alone, a

129% increase from 2016” (Fowler et al., 2021, p. 37).

Political ads can be broken down into three broad categories: positive ads, negative

ads, and contrast ads. Positive, or promotional ads, focus solely on the favored candidate.

Positive ads have the smallest prevalence making up only less than a quarter of all ads in

competitive races (Fowler et al., 2021). The most common form of positive ads are biographies

that introduce the candidate and paint them in a more human light before getting into more

negative and substantive ads (Fowler et al., 2021). One of the most prominent examples of a

positive ad is Bill Clinton’s 1992 “A Man from Hope” (Schill, 2022). This ad did not mention his

opponent nor did it get into the weeds on policy issues. Instead, he showcases important

aspects of his identity and history.

On the other hand, negative ads also referred to as attack ads, talk solely about the

opposing candidate except for the “paid for by” line. Due to their nature of attacking an

opponent on a specific issue or policy, negative ads typically contain more substantive
information as well. These ads have the ability to boost knowledge for those who are less

politically involved and can lead to seeking out greater information (Fowler et al., 2021).

Relatedly, contrast ads are those that mention both the favored and opposing candidates by

contrasting the two. A famous contrast ad that aired in 1988 was from the George H. W. Bush

campaign known as the “Willie Horton” ad (Schill, 2022). This ad uses the example of violent

criminal Willie Horton to contrast Bush and Dukakis on the issue of the death penalty.

One factor of political ads that makes them so impactful and persuasive is their

appeals. Political ads contain appeals to various different emotions. These appeals are

included with the goal of persuasion, and ultimately, mobilization (Fowler et al., 2021). One

type of appeal that is known to be particularly persuasive is an appeal to fear. Appeals to fear

can lead to both increased political knowledge and greater rates of mobilization. Fear appeals

aid mobilization by convincing people of the importance of voting, thus raising the stakes of

the election (Fowler et al., 2021). An example of an ad that heavily relies on an appeal to fear

and results in greater mobilization is Lyndon B. Johnson’s iconic 1964 “Daisy” ad. This ad,

which aired only once featured a young girl counting and picking petals off of daisies until

suddenly a voice counts down and there is the flash and sound of a nuclear explosion (Schill,

2022). This ad appealed to fears surrounding the creation and threat of nuclear weapons.

Finally, ad amplification which “[o]ccurs when news media choose to cover a campaign

ad, [...] providing additional opportunities for citizens to take in the message” (Fowler et al.,

2021, p. 125), creates earned media opportunities for the candidate. A prime example of this

process is the media coverage of Joni Ernst’s 2014 “Squeal” ad for her U.S. Senate campaign

(Shill, 2022). In this ad, she drove a comparison between being a politician and castrating hogs.
The content of this ad led to increased levels of media coverage and ultimately brought greater

attention to an otherwise little-known campaign.

Part Two:

The campaign that I have chosen for this assignment is the 2021 Virginia Gubernatorial

race between Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin, the Republican candidate was a

CEO at The Carlyle Group, an investment firm in Northern Virginia (Office of the Governor of

Virginia). McAuliffe, who was the Democrat, previously served as governor of Virginia from

2014 to 2018 and has deep ties to the Democratic party (Janfaza, 2021). This race was

consistently neck and neck throughout the campaign which led to an increased amount of

two-sided information flows, occurring when both sides compete for citizen attention by

attempting to equal or exceed the other’s ad volume (Fowler et al., 2021). I have analyzed three

ads from each campaign and some of the predominant themes I encountered include the

prevalence of negative or contrast ads and the focus on policy, specifically surrounding

education, abortion, and COVID-19 mandates. This signals the importance of these issues to

the voters at the time of the campaign.

The first Youngkin ad that I analyzed is a high-level production value testimonial ad

entitled “McAuliffe Shut Us Out” which was released by the Youngkin campaign on October 25,

2021. This ad features Laura Murphy, a mother from northern Virginia talking to the camera in

her living room surrounded by images of her family. She discusses the concerns she had when

her son came home from school with a book that contained explicit material. She took her

concerns to lawmakers who would go on to propose bills requiring schools to inform parents

when explicit content was assigned. She then talks about how the bill had bipartisan support
but was ultimately vetoed twice by McAuliffe who was governor at the time. This is clearly a

“plain folks” appeal as it is meant to play into the strong feelings that primarily suburban,

middle to upper-class mothers harbor toward the current state of education in Virginia.

Throughout this main part of the ad, somber music plays which cue the audience to be

concerned about the issue at hand. This past action from McAuliffe is then directly compared

with Youngkin’s platform at the end and the music shifts to a more upbeat, promising tune.

The next Youngkin ad included in this analysis was released by the campaign only a few

days later on October 30 and was a comparative negative ad that juxtaposed McAuliffe’s record

on issues with that of his public stances during the campaign. The ad, entitled “Dark Money,

Big Favors” attempts to tie McAuliffe to Dominion Energy as a way of showing that he can be

bought out by large companies just as he has in the past. This ad utilizes many classic tools for

negative political advertising including bad pictures of McAuliffe in black and white and

soundbites that make him sound conniving. The ad starts out with the claim, “Dominion

bought Terry McAuliffe for $280,000.” It then goes on to give examples of how he favored

Dominion over Virginia citizens while he was previously governor and the words “helping

dominion” are green to cue the notion of spending money. The ad ends with a cut from a press

conference in which McAuliffe states, “I am proud to have been a part of the team helping

Dominion,” and a claim that Dominion gave $200k to a secretive PAC in order to attack

Youngkin. Along with the previous Youngkin ad, this ad contains an appeal to the average

citizen with the implication that electing Youngkin would lead to lower energy bills because he

is not being bought out by big energy.

 The final Youngkin ad that I analyzed differs from the others primarily in sponsorship.

The ad “Pay the Price” is a 30-second spot that is sponsored by the interest group ‘Free to

Learn Action’ with no attachments to the campaign itself. Therefore, the airing of this attack

ad was less likely to cause backlash for Youngkin and is oftentimes favorable to campaign-

sponsored negative attacks. According to its website, “[t]he Free to Learn Coalition is a

nonpartisan organization established to support parents, caregivers, and community

organizations in their advocacy for quality K-12 education” (Free to Learn). This negative issue

ad centers around education policy and claims that there is a myriad of issues that have been

caused by McAuliffe’s past policies on education. These include a decrease in SOL testing

scores, an increase in failing test scores, an increase in sexual assaults, and a “divisive activist

curriculum.” The heuristics that are highlighted in this ad associate the role of parents with

being the primary protector of their children. These signify to the viewer that as a parent, it is

your job to be fully involved in your child’s life–including their education. This ad aired

relatively soon after McAuliffe made the statement during a debate that he did not believe

parents should have a say in their child’s education, thus playing on the emotions many

parents were feeling at the time. In order to drive home the message of this ad even further

and mobilize voters for Youngkin, the ad appeals to fear by containing intense music, as well

as darker overlays on images that characterize the perceived danger children will face if

McAuliffe is elected.

Turning now to an analysis of McAuliffe’s ads, the first ad I chose to analyze was

released by the campaign on October 19, 2021, entitled “Always.” This ad is a

rebuttal/counterattack which was crafted as a response to Youngkin attacking McAuliffe for

his aforementioned statements regarding parental input in public education. One specific note

to be made about this ad is that there seems to be relatively low production value which could

be a result of the nature of the ad. This ad was clearly made as a response that was not

necessarily planned in advance and needed to be made under constraints. The ad begins by

showing a montage of pictures of McAuliffe’s family throughout the years doing school-related

events which prime the audience to view the candidate in a family-friendly light and creates

an appeal to parents of school-age children. It then cuts to a monologue from McAuliffe

walking through a school where it is primarily a contrast ad as he is directly talking to the

camera and states that “Youngkin is taking his words out of context.” He then takes the

incumbent approach and emphasizes his positive record on education policy when previously

in office. Throughout this ad, there is uplifting and happy music to elicit feelings of

compassion and sympathy from the candidate.

Another McAuliffe campaign-sponsored ad I analyzed is a negative issue ad entitled

“Caught” which attacks Youngkin’s “extreme far-right agenda on abortion.” This ad begins

with cuts from grainy news clips that contain coverage of a secretly recorded video of

Youngkin discussing his stance on abortion if elected governor. A female voiceover then comes

in to make the proclamation that “Glenn Youngkin has been caught admitting his far-right

agenda.” This issue ad is meant to appeal to women both through its content being about

abortion policy and its use of a female voiceover. The ad then shows the actual footage of him

claiming that he is not coming out strong against abortion during the campaign as to not lose

moderate votes but plans to “start going on offense” when he is governor and has a majority in

the house. These comments, as well as the inclusion of the hidden-camera graphic, send a cue
to the audience that he is being sneaky and can’t be trusted. The ad ends by taking his secretly

recorded words and putting them blatantly on the screen with the words ‘ban’ and ‘defund’

larger and more emphasized to attach Youngkin to these far-right ideas which he has tried to

stay away from.

The final McAuliffe ad in this analysis is his campaign-sponsored September 2021

“Doctor” spot which featured a trauma critical care surgeon from Fairfax, Virginia speaking

testimonial-style to the camera. The ad is set in a hospital which, in today’s culture almost

immediately cues policy issues surrounding COVID-19. He is discussing COVID-19 and how

McAuliffe has plans to make Virginia far safer than Youngkin. He ties Youngkin to Trump, thus

appealing to fears on the left, by stating that neither will listen to doctors or scientists

regarding the information on COVID-19 protocols. He then goes into the specific policies of

Youngkin that make him a dangerous candidate such as opposing requiring vaccines for

healthcare workers and opposing mask mandates in schools. He ends by explicitly stating that

Youngkin’s ideas are “dangerous for Virginia,” creating an appeal to fear in an attempt to

impress upon the audience the importance of voting in this election.

Part Three:

As previously mentioned, this was a media-heavy race, in part due to its timing in the

political schedule. The Virginia gubernatorial election occurs in an off-year between

presidential and midterm elections which means that it is one of the only races, thus often

subjected to more media attention than most governor’s races. Additionally, the Virginia

gubernatorial election has historically foreshadowed trends in the national midterm elections
in the year that follows (Enten, 2021). Therefore, all eyes were on Virginia to make predictions

for the upcoming changes to the national legislature in 2022.

All six of the ads in this analysis were subject to various types of media coverage.

Regarding Youngkin’s ads, the “McAuliffe Shut us Out” ad featuring mother Laura Murphy was

covered by The Washington Post where key context is provided for many of the claims made in

the ad. Kessler makes the claim that her child was not young, as was insinuated in the ad, but

instead a high schooler who was taking AP English. Another important part of this article is

the ad watch coverage which exposes the fact that Murphy’s family is well-connected

politically among the Republicans in northern Virginia. Specifically, he states that Murphy and

her husband contributed substantially to both Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign and Youngkin’s

campaign (Kessler, 2021). This type of coverage can have severe consequences for the

Youngkin campaign as it lessens the impact of Murphy’s testimony.

Unlike the Post article which worked to invalidate the claims made in the ad, The

Richmond-Times Dispatch article addressing the “Dark Money, Big Favors” ad provided

context in a way that supplemented the surface-level information presented in the ad.

According to the article, Dominion Energy put $200,000 into a secretive PAC that attacked

Youngkin in digital ads in an attempt to depress Youngkin’s support in rural areas (Wilson,

2021). This article also plays the role of increasing political knowledge by going into brief

details about the Dominion bill McAuliffe signed in 2015 that was mentioned in the ad. For the

final Youngkin ad, “Pay the Price,” the coverage from CBS News largely focuses on how this ad

will be strategically used to play into the favor of the Youngkin campaign. According to

Navarro & O’Keefe, this ad will air primarily in competitive counties outside of Washington
D.C. and Richmond as well as digitally in Fairfax, Loudoun, and Albemarle counties because

Free to Learn Action claims these counties have been at the center of the debate over k-12

education (Navarro & O’Keefe, 2021). This article, similar to the prior ones, also provides a

fact-checking role by providing context specifically to the sexual assault claim.

In contrast to the previous articles that covered the chosen Youngkin ads, the media

coverage surrounding the McAuliffe ads is not primarily related to fact-checking or providing

context to claims in the ads. Instead, these articles take a more broad, strategic view of

McAuliffe’s advertising that includes an analysis of the ads and the insights they give to the

state of the campaign. For example, CNN’s Cillizza states that the sentence “I don’t think

parents should be telling schools what they should teach” fundamentally transformed the

governor’s race. This article which was published on October 19, 2021, claims that the “Always”

ad is a worrisome sign for the Democrats as it puts McAuliffe on the defensive (Cillizza, 2021).

In terms of the “Caught” ad, coverage from CNBC highlights the fact that three of McAuliffe’s

most expensive ads have attacked Youngkin for his abortion stance which is also his most

aired ads on broadcast or cable television (Constantino, 2021). The coverage of this ad and

other issue-oriented ads helps to set the public agenda by emphasizing important policy

concerns of candidates.

Finally, the “Doctor” ad has received substantial news coverage, particularly in

September 2021 when the McAuliffe campaign laser-focused its attacks on Youngkin’s

pandemic policy with more than 60% of McAuliffe's TV ads attacking Youngkin on COVID-19

(Montellaro, 2021). The coverage of this ad is similar to that of the rest of the McAuliffe ads

because it is a more technical analysis of the ad. Montellaro’s Politico article from September
2021 informs the audience that there are two subtly different versions of this ad disseminated

into different media markets. The ad that aired in the Northern Virginia suburbs of D.C.

contains the doctor comparing Youngkin to Trump by saying both “Won’t listen to doctors and

scientists,” while the ad that aired in the state’s southern media markets omits the Trump

comparison (Montellaro, 2021). The implications of this coverage could lead to undecided

voters seeing the behind-the-scenes of political strategy and feeling as though they are being

deceived, thus becoming less likely to vote for the candidate.

References:

Cillizza, C. (2021, October 19). This Ad Reveals how Worried Terry McAuliffe is About the Virginia

Governor’s Race. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/19/politics/terry-mcauliffe-glenn-

youngkin-virginia-governor/index.html

Constantino, A. K. (2021, October 22). Abortion, Schools take Center Stage in Virginia

Governor’s Election Ad Wars. CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/22/virginia-

governors-race-abortion-schools-take-center-stage-in-election-ad-wars-.html

Enten, H. (2021, October 14). Why Virginia’s 2021 Election Matters. CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/14/politics/virginia-elections-biden-approval-analysis/

index.html

Fowler, E. F., Franz, M. M., & Ridout, T. N. (2021). Political Advertising in the United

States. Taylor and Francis.

Free to Learn. (2021). About. Retrieved from https://freetolearn.org/about/

Janfaza, R., Merica, D., & Bradner, E. (2021, October 16). Who is Terry McAuliffe, the

Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate in Virginia. CNN.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/16/politics/terry-mcauliffe-democrat-virginia-

governor/index.html

Kessler, G. (2021, October 27). Glenn Youngkin’s Viral ‘Child’ ad is Missing Important

Context. The Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/10/27/glenn-youngkins-viral-child-ad-

is-missing-important-context/

Montellaro, Z. (2021, September 23). Vaccines Take Center Stage in Tight Virginia
 Governor’s Race. Politico. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/23/virginia-

governor-race-vaccines-democrats-513705

Navarro, A., & O’Keefe, E. (2021, October 21). Group Backed by Conservatives to Launch

$1M Ad Campaign Slamming Terry McAuliffe and School Boards. CBS News.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/virginia-governor-glenn-youngkin-terry-mcauliffe-

education-ads/

Office of the Governor of Virginia. (n.d.). About Governor Youngkin.

https://www.governor.virginia.gov/about/

Schill, D. (2021). Political Advertising [PowerPoint Slides]. Retrieved from

https://canvas.jmu.edu/courses/1849779/files/134399790?module_item_id=31609882

Wilson, P. (2021, October 27). Youngkin Hammers McAuliffe’s Ties to Dominion Energy in TV

Ad. The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

https://richmond.com/news/state-and-regional/youngkin-hammers-mcauliffes-ties-

to-dominion-energy-in-tv-ad/article_e51e7c18-214b-53f4-b7e5-601ebcbba39d.html