WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton has spent an estimated $53 million on negative ads against Donald Trump, not the “hundreds of millions of dollars” in unflattering ads that Trump claims her campaign has unleashed against him, according to an analysis of campaign advertising.
Clinton has spent an estimated $91 million on broadcast advertising since June 8 - some $53 million of which went toward negative ads, a report by the Wesleyan Media Project said.
Trump said during Monday’s debate at New York’s Hofstra University that Clinton has "spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue. They're untrue. And they're misrepresentations."
"My assumption is it’s an exaggeration, something that he’s prone to do," Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of the project, said of Trump’s claim.
In 2012, 152,000 ads aired in the presidential race between August 19 and September 15, but only 89,000 ads aired during that same time period in the current cycle
Wesleyan Media Project Sept. 20, 2016 report
Between August 19 and September 15, about 61percent of Clinton-sponsored broadcast ads were negative; 8 percent were spots that drew contrasts between the two presidential candidates; and 31 percent were positive Clinton ads.
During the same time frame, Trump spent an estimated $14.2 million on broadcast ads. Eighty-nine percent of the ads were contrast spots while 11 percent of them were negative, according to the media project report.
William Douglas: 202-383-6026, @williamgdouglas
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