AT THE height of the dotcom boom, some newspapers and magazines found it hard to print enough pages to absorb all the advertising that firms were willing to buy. Something similar is happening in North Carolina, this year’s most expensive Senate race by some distance. Around $87m has been spent already, or $9 for every North Carolinian, and the campaigns are not done yet. Some of it is old fashioned: three campaign spots air on television every five minutes on average. Some is creepily well targeted: as your correspondent walked into a studio in Raleigh to watch Thom Tillis, the Republican challenger, on October 21st, his phone started pushing adverts enumerating the many ways in which Mr Tillis has demonstrated his perfidy.North Carolina has drawn a lot of attention from national groups because the race is close. At one point, it looked like the key to Republican control of the Senate. Kay Hagan, the Democratic incumbent, won convincingly in 2008 when candidates were clamouring to be seen with Barack Obama. Now they are not, she is vulnerable: one of four Democratic senators running for re-election in states that Mr Obama lost in 2012. Since the Republicans probably need three of these to take the Senate, and since North Carolina is the most marginal of the four, a win here should mean an overall Republican victory, barring slip-ups elsewhere. The attack ads denouncing Mrs...
from The Economist: United States http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21627671-most-expensive-senate-race-window-future-elections-how-spend-it?fsrc=rss|ust
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