BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana leads the nation in spending on TV political ads this year, as candidates and outside political groups devote millions mainly to the competition for governor.
With spending over the last week, Louisiana's TV campaign advertising reached $15.8 million, according to an analysis by the Center for Public Integrity. That edged the state past Kentucky, which also has a competitive governor's race.
Only a few states have statewide elections this year.
More than $10 million has been poured into TV spots for the Louisiana governor's race alone, 43 percent of it spent by independent organizations, mainly on attack ads.
The governor's race is a competition among four major candidates: Republican Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle, Republican Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, Democratic state Rep. John Bel Edwards and Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter.
Vitter and a super PAC supporting him account for $4.3 million of the TV campaign ads.
The Center for Public Integrity analyzed political advertising on broadcast television from 211 media markets around the country based on data from Kantar Media/CMAG, a media tracking firm that offers a widely accepted estimate of the money spent to air each spot.
These figures cover ads aired between Jan. 1, 2014, and Oct. 19, yet represent only part of the money spent on political advertising. They do not include ads for radio, online, direct mail, newspapers or TV ads that aired on local cable systems. The estimates also do not include the cost of making the ads.