Abortion leads as top issue in campaign ads for last two weeks

The debate over abortion rights dominated campaign ads in the first half of September, coming in as the top-most mentioned issue from September 1 through September 15, according to an NBC News analysis.

The analysis examined 448 unique Senate, House and gubernatorial ads tracked by AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. Abortion was mentioned in 90 of those ads, or two percent, according to AdImpact.

Democrats overwhelmingly ran more ads about abortion than Republicans. Many Democratic ads accused their opponents of being “too extreme” on abortion, like this ad against Republican Jennifer Ruth-Green run by the DCCC in Indiana, this ad run by Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., against his opponent Karoline Leavitt and this ad run by Kristen Engel, a Democrat running in Arizona’s 6th District, against her Republican opponent.

One Republican who did run an ad attacking his opponent on abortion was Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. His ad attacked his opponent for Senate, Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., saying, “She … supports taxpayer funded abortion until the moment of birth.” (Politifact found this statement to be “mostly false.”)

The second most oft-mentioned topic is inflation, which led NBC News’ previous ad analyses for fourth months straight. It was mentioned in 71 ads from September 1 through September 15.

Many inflation ads were run by challengers, accusing their opponents of making prices rise while in power.

For example, Republican Mark Ronchetti accused sitting Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham of “making [inflation] worse” in this ad.

And, in Iowa’s First District, Democrat Christina Bohannan ran an ad telling voters, “Prices keep going up and [GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks] won’t do anything about it.”

The third most-ofted mention issue in ads in the last two weeks was crime, followed by guns and China.