Despite GOP Wave, Parties Fought to a Draw in Ad War

Candidates for the House and Senate, along with allied political groups, ran ads more than 1.6 million times on broadcast TV.

A man holds a television remote control unit for a Virgin Media set top box in this arranged photograph at the company's store on Oxford Street in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Billionaire John Malone's Liberty Global Inc. agreed to acquire Virgin Media, Britain's second-largest pay-TV provider, in a $16 billion cash-and-stock transaction announced in the U.S. yesterday.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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By Greg Giroux

November 12, 2014 at 2:04 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

At 30 seconds a pop, it would take you about a year and a half to plow through the 1.62 million times campaign advertisements for U.S. House or Senate races aired on broadcast TV stations this election cycle.

Senate ads accounted for 1.01 million of the total spot count, underscoring the big fight for control of a chamber that shifted from a Democratic majority to a Republican majority. The gargantuan number will tick up a bit in the next few weeks as the Dec. 6 runoff in Louisiana comes into clearer focus for voters.