Former United States president Bill Clinton, forced to sit out the US presidential campaign after heart bypass surgery, is expected to record a number of radio adverts from his home.
The ex-president and Democrat star’s contribution, likely to include a taped message for use by Democratic phonebanks, was confirmed on a day when campaign strategists were preoccupied with what will be the endgame of the election: they were deciding on the message, and selecting the target audiences, for a final blitz of TV advertising.
Thursday night’s televised debate marked the last national moment of an election season that so far has bypassed the majority of American voters, with 87% of campaign ads reaching only 27% of the electorate.
But viewers in those states targeted by Republicans and Democrats for saturation coverage can expect that final encounter between incumbent George W Bush and challenger John Kerry to be revisited constantly in the coming fortnight.
Any gaffes or perceived slips by either candidate are likely to turn up in their opponent’s TV ads.
”Both candidates are going to be on the attack constantly,” said Larry Sabato of the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia.
”This race is tight as a tick, and nobody is going to let up — because the person who is going to let up is going to lose.” It is unclear how many voters will get a chance to view the debate re-runs.
So far, the election has largely been fought in 10 battleground states: Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, according to an analysis of TV advertising by the University of Wisconsin advertising project.
That is a far narrower field than was originally envisaged by Kerry campaign advisers; last July they were confident of contesting as many as 20 states.
But it also contradicts Republican claims that New Jersey, considered a safe state for Kerry, is now in play.
”Whatever the campaigns are telling you about what states are in play, or are not in play, where they put their dollars shows what is really happening,” said Joel Rivlin of the University of Wisconsin.
The most saturated city has been Miami — a reflection of the tight contest in the state in the 2000 elections — but the Wisconsin project also revealed a fierce battle of the airwaves in Albuquerque in New Mexico, and Reno in Nevada, as well as several cities in Ohio and Florida.
However, that dynamic could change after Thursday’s debate.
”They are going to try to figure out where they gained the most advantage. They are going to look at polls and focus groups and see what issue resonated with their voters; and that is what they are going to focus on,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg public policy centre at the University of Pennsylvania.
So far, Kerry has focused on health care, taking up the subject in 62% of his TV adverts.
Bush has relied on the ”war on terror” and national security, using such material for 46% of his campaign ads.
Although both campaigns have resorted to attack ads, Bush has been far more negative to date, attacking his opponent in about a third of TV ads.
As well as defining the winning issues for a candidate, the end of the debates ordinarily shrinks the number of states in contention, and some commentators predicted this week that Colorado and Minnesota may no longer be as fiercely contested.
But that tradition may be abandoned this year, as the Kerry campaign tries to learn from the mistakes made by Al Gore in 2000.
Gore made a serious error in cutting back TV advertising in Tennessee and West Virginia, both states where the Democrats had been confident of victory.
By the time Democratic strategists realised that their support there was eroding, it was too late to get ads back on the air and recoup the earlier lead.
Democratic strategists may also consider ploughing money back into states such as Missouri, where they cancelled TV advertising last month when it appeared that Bush had an unstoppable lead. — Â