Presidential candidates have spent $6.5m flooding just one small television market alone with more than 10,000 political commercials in the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses, the first votes of the 2016 election, according to a Guardian study.



The exclusive analysis of regulatory filings by the four main commercial TV stations in Des Moines, Iowa, also reveals a sharp increase in the influence of rich donors on the race, with spending by Super Pacs – organizations independent of the candidates’ campaigns which, unlike the campaigns, may raise unlimited amounts of money from individual donors – now outstripping candidate expenditure by at least a third.

TV executives estimate Super Pac spending is at record levels in Iowa, thanks in part to the supreme court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United versus the Federal Electoral Commission case, which removed limits on how much wealthy individuals can contribute.

“This is the first time in eight years that it’s an open race for both parties,” said Dale Woods, general manager of the Des Moines NBC affiliate, WHO. “In 2012 there were just three or four leading Republicans. Now you have a close race on both the Republican and Democratic sides.”

The Guardian analysis suggests an average of $23 per voter has already been spent in the Des Moines area, which ranks just 73rd among US television markets by number of “TV homes” but will play a crucial role in the national nomination process when voters take part in party caucuses on February 1, the first electoral tests of the 2016 election.

In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders appears to have narrowly overtaken Hillary Clinton in TV spending in the state capital, where a high concentration of progressive voters offers him a chance of tipping the balance in what appears to be a neck-and-neck race in the state.

Clinton started television advertising in Iowa three months before Sanders, but a national surge of more than 2m small campaign donations has allowed him to rapidly catch up with the former secretary of state in spending – a trend confirmed by a recent email sent to Clinton supporters by her campaign officials warning that she was now behind the Vermont senator in TV spending in Iowa.

On the Republican side, negative advertising is proliferating as many well-funded campaigns struggle to make themselves heard in the crowded field. Though frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz appear to be relying partly on free news media coverage instead, the fierce battle for survival among their establishment rivals has been compared by some commentators to a bucket of crabs dragging down anyone who looks like escaping with increasing vicious attack ads on each other.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is spending most heavily through the Super Pac Right to Rise, which raised $100m shortly after he entered the race but looks to have spent $1.2m just in Des Moines.

But his Florida rival Marco Rubio has overtaken Bush in overall spending, according to the local analysis, thanks to much higher direct spending by his campaign. Regulatory protections mean that candidates are guaranteed the lowest price for their ads but Super Pacs must compete against other commercial advertisers, paying up to ten times the rate for the same daytime slot, and many times more than that in primetime.

This has helped Rubio secure 50% more ad slots than Bush in the market, which broadcasts to a population of 426,000, despite spending less through the Super Pacs that support him.

The pro-Rubio Super Pac Conservative Solutions nonetheless had to pay $15,000, for example, for just two spots during the local Fox affiliate’s coverage of the Arizona Cardinals versus Carolina Panthers football game this Sunday. Ted Cruz spent $5,000 apiece for two slots on the same local channel during Sunday’s playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Denver Broncos, while Right to Rise dropped $8,000 on just one short commercial slot during ABC’s New Year’s Eve coverage on its local Des Moines affiliate WOI.

WHO’s manager Woods defended the fees charged to Super Pacs for such high profile slots. “You have to remember, the station does not have an obligation to take the Pacs,” he said. “They are competing in the open market just like anyone else; they are competing again the local advertisers, the car dealers, the department stores and the restaurants. They are fishing in a much bigger pond than the candidates.”

Woods also predicted that the deluge of advertising would intensify as the year goes on, as Iowa is also increasingly seen as a swing state in the general election.

“What we have seen in previous times is that a couple of weeks before a general election up to 70% of the commercials are political. We are nowhere near that right now,” he said, explaining that campaigns prefer advertising alongside news shows.

“Their research shows that the viewers who watch the news are more likely to vote,” added Woods. “But there comes a point when the inventory gets sold out, then they take their money and allocate it to different programmes: prime time, day time or sports. Usually that will happen after the demand for the news programming fills up.”

The popularity of news programming has helped maintain investment in Iowa journalism, according to the station, which recently invested in two new cameras to help it cover live political events and boasts of a politics heavy Sunday show and hour long daily 4pm bulletin.

But viewers in Iowa are already struggling to escape the relentless political advertising. Flicking between Jeopardy on NBC and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on Fox, it is impossible to escape the regular Hillary Clinton commercials, for example. “She’s got what it takes to do the toughest job in the world,” says one sombre commerical in the gravelly tone of a movie announcer that runs in between ads for fitness centre and for-profit colleges.

A sample of the 4pm Channel 13 news slot – “the place for politics” – on WHO reveals nearly a dozen ads an hour, though no political editorial coverage until 4.26pm.

Instead, Bush interrupts the weather to blast Rubio for flip flopping on immigration in a slick animation that portrays the beleaguered former Florida as an unstoppable freight train. A few minutes later Rubio hits back with a spot telling viewers that “Jeb Bush is desperate”, while Cruz boasts of being “the one proven conservative standing for president” and a soft focus Rubio intones “America needs a president who will keep us safe”. Clinton pops back up to remind us that her Republican opponents have also called for carpet bombing.

Wood says there are heavy costs to covering the caucuses and compares his revenues unfavourably to other TV stations in the same group that cover markets with prominent sports franchises.

“Caucus happens every four years, but the challenge for us is there are so many candidates in this race this year. Can we cover that large of a field? You can’t get to as many places throughout the state as you’d like to because there are so many people in involved.”

Additional reporting by Ellen Brait and Mahita Gajanan in New York