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Every Thursday afternoon, Michigan Radio's All Things Considered Host Jennifer White takes a closer look at the issues affecting Michigan politics with state political analysts including Ken Sikkema, Susam Demas, Debbie Dingell, Bill Ballenger and others.

Political Roundup: Ad time, who's buying?

We’re a little over a month out from the November 6th election. At this point you would expect to hear a lot of political ads on television.

But there seem to be more TV ads for and against the various ballot proposals, and less from the presidential races.

For example, the Romney campaign pulled advertising from Michigan weeks ago, although a pro-Romney group has been running a new ad. But Susan Demas says money is not the issue.

Susan Demas is a Political Analyst for Michigan Information and Research Service. She says there might not be any ad time left to buy.

“And at some point there won’t be because we do have all of these proposals on the ballot, and so many of them are eating up ad time. You also, have U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow and Pete Hoekstra and they’re battling it out for the Senate, so they’ve got ad time reserved as well,” she said.

Ken Sikkema who is the former Senate Majority Leader and Senior Policy Fellow at Public Sector Consultants agrees with Demas.

“As Susan points out, anybody looking to buy time on television is going to run into a problem because the ballot committees are just basically buying up all of the time,” he said.

Demas added, "...unless they [Obama and Romney] see Michigan as being a really good investment, I'd expect them spending their dollars elsewhere in states where it could make more of a difference."

Mercedes Mejia is a producer and director of Stateside.
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