LOS ANGELES: There are references to war records and battles with cancer. The music is generally sombre and portentous, and the commentary packed with claims of leadership skills and solemn pledges to the middle classes and senior citizens.

This is now the standard television fare for the residents of Iowa as the Democratic party’s presidential contenders enter the final few weeks of campaigning before next year’s primaries get under way.

Television commercials are the simplest way to reach potential voters and there will be no escape from them in the key states where a few thousand votes could make the difference between a presidential run and political oblivion.

The current nomination frontrunners competing in the Iowa primary on January 19 are Howard Dean, John Kerry, Richard Gephardt and John Edwards.

Between them they have run 10,800 television spots in Iowa, 4,500 of them in the city of Des Moines alone, so far this year, according to the University of Wisconsin’s advertising project, which has been studying the campaign.

This is five times the number of adverts run by Republicans and Democrats combined in the same period in the previous presidential race.

“It’s an important race, and an important race has lots of advertising,” the university project’s director, Ken Goldstein, said on Thursday.

He forecast that if Mr Gephardt came bottom of the poll in Iowa — a state where he should do well — he would be out of the running. He described the situation as an “advertising war”.

One of the reasons for the high spending is the crowded field, with all four leading Iowa contenders — along with the former Nato supreme commander Wesley Clark and the former vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman — still believing they have a real chance for the nomination.

Mr Clark and Mr Lieberman are not competing in Iowa, calculating that no clear winner will emerge.

In New Hampshire, where another key primary is to be held, 3,500 adverts have been placed for the Democrats, compared with 1,982 by the same date in 1999.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.