Did Democrats Underperform In House Races Due To Insufficient Digital Ad Spend?

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/us/politics/aoc-biden-progressives.html

In an interview with the New York Times published on November 9, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out her Democratic colleagues' inability to put together a digital marketing strategy as one of the primary reasons that Democrats lost seats in the house in this election cycle.  She claims that, contrary to several party members' insistence that overly-progressive ideology cost Democrats these seats, the main reason is that several of these campaigns weren't "firing on all cylinders" from a digital perspective.  Specifically, she called out Conor Lamb, a moderate Democrat who only spent $2,000 in advertising on Facebook in the week leading up to the election.  Lamb did win his election for Representative of Pennsylvania's 17th district, but only by 2 points, underperforming Joe Biden's performance, who won by 20 points in Allegheny County where the district resides.

It's unclear whether digital ad spend alone is the reason for this discrepancy; perhaps Republicans and right-leaning Independents view Donald Trump as unfavorable but are still willing to split their vote and opt for more "palatable" Republican candidates in their districts.  Or perhaps there truly is a shift toward progressive ideologies in these traditionally bluer districts and Democrats who are perceived as more moderate than Biden are losing some of the "far left" vote share.  Nothing will be certain until the entirety of the votes are counted, but it is clear that digital marketing is playing a much larger role in elections each cycle; estimates from The Center for Responsive Politics suggest that campaigns will have spent nearly $11 billion in digital ads this cycle, vs. $6.5 billion in 2016.  With numbers like these it's very easy to understand and believe in Ocasio-Cortez's insistence on the importance of digital marketing; we will need to keep an eye on the 2022 midterms and 2024 election cycles to see if Democrats decide to place more focus on the digital medium.