First of all one has to reduce the degree to which paid advertising affects the elections. (politics.stackexchange.com)
A lot of these candidates in the earlier campaign season had their religious ideas exposed to the voters, causing viewers to at least be aware of religion, and how if affects elections. (religion.blogs.cnn.com)
Maybe up until 12 years ago we could make the argument that these types of tactics can affect an election through voter turnout. (politics.stackexchange.com)