Transparency  |
American Bridge 21st Century provides a clear roadmap of their ad buys and rationale behind their targeting choices in publicly available materials such as their website and in press releases. |
Geographic targeting
 |
AB PAC's targets include key states of MI, WI, and PA but omit other critical battleground states like AZ, NC, and FL. In addition, their "Swing County Project" within MI, WI, and PA are questionable places to prioritize spending given their low capacity to increase statewide votes sufficiently due to the small populations in those counties. Moreover, their "Swing Counties" do not include the counties where the college educated White or People of Color voters who comprise the base of Democratic supporters are concentrated. |
Demographic targeting  |
AB PAC explicitly identifies small town rural voters and seniors in the "Swing County Project" counties as their priority targets, and states that the reason for this prioritization is because these individuals are necessary to a Trump defeat. They do not target young voters, newly registered voters, African American, POC or Muslim voters, college-educated White voters, single women voters, or any of the other core constituencies of the voters who have supported Democratic candidates in recent elections and whose enthusiastic support will be central to a 2020 victory in MI, WI, and PA. An examination of their ad buy content reveals a focus on former Trump voters, senior citizens, and farmers. Moreover, AB PAC created media content on COVID featuring a Mexican American daughter of a COVID victim but failed to identify her as such. And there's no indication that they created a Spanish-language version of the ad for use in battleground states like AZ or FL with large Latino populations despite the fact that these two states are experiencing COVID surges, especially among POC populations, and this content would likely resonate there. |
Data-informed strategy  |
The preponderance of empirical data shows that Democrats lost MI, WI, and PA because of low Black voter turnout and Obama voters defecting to 3rd- and 4th-party candidates (e.g. Trump received fewer votes than Romney in WI, disproving the notion that Obama-Trump defections flipped that state). Since 2016, the most meaningful shift in the electorate has been among college-educated Whites moving towards the Democrats (as documented extensively by journalist Ron Brownstein), helping flip the House in 2018. AB PAC's spending, however, runs completely contrary to what the data says they should be doing. They are quite explicitly targeting the voters least likely to be won over, based on all available evidence. While they are in important states, there is no evidence cited to support the omission of other critical battleground states. Furthermore, the "Swing Counties" do not align with the turnout needs for 2020 victories, and there is no explanation offered to support the choice to prioritize these counties relative to others with large numbers of Dem-supporting voters who must be mobilized in order for Dems to win the state. |
| OVERALL GRADE |  |
