What Abbot and Davis' ads say about them

          In Bethany Albertson and Joshua Blank's article, they attempt to define the campaign strategies of the two main gubernatorial candidates based on the ads they have been running leading up to the November Election. They argue that since the Democrats, hence Davis, have not been in power for many years, they are attempting to use anxiety driven ads to prompt the electorate into taking a second to pause and think about how things have been done the last decade or so. They assert that the Davis campaign's logic behind this is that maybe the voter will do more research, and see that the status quo isn't all it's hyped up to be. In Abbott's case, the authors claim that his ads have a more hopeful message. They say that according to his ads, things have been going well for Texas, so there's no need for a change in leadership.
          In this op-ed piece, the authors are attempting to dissect the emotional strategies behind the two campaigns for the voters. They are providing an analysis for the electorate to better understand what emotions each campaign is trying to play on in order to drum up support. The authors appear to be credible sources, one an assistant professor at UT, the other a grad student at UT, and also the manager of a political research project.
          However, while both respectable author's make a valid point, they fail to take to entire picture into account. Recently, I have personally seen negative ads from Abbott's campaign, and Davis does have hopeful ads on her website. The authors may have been accurate when the political ads first started rolling out months ago, but their article is only a week old. The authors do concede at the end that neither side is running a strictly positive or negative campaign, but they fail to provide any evidence of this. The author's should have done a more thorough search of the differing ads available,  especially from the Abbott campaign, and not just stuck with the original ads that came out. While the die-hard politico's from each side will remember the old ads, I think much of the electorate will have forgotten them come November. The majority will only remember the last ad they saw, so we can expect an upturn in frequency of both positive and negative ads from both sides in the month ahead.