Clinton was most frequently surrounded by people. Candidate Dole was sometimes shown in his Kansas home town. Each of the backgrounds is used to communicate a variety of things about the candidate. Props Props are objects shown in the scenes. The most common prop is the American flag.
Desks are important props.
A recent candidate showed us a denuded tree in a dessert as a prop representing what would happen if his opponent were elected. A podium is a prop, or sometimes other people serve as props. All of these faces and their expressions are carefully planted in ads. A most common approach is to take the face of an opponent at its most unattractive and show that face as background for words written on the screen to indicate what awful things he has done. Faces are probably a candidate's most direct conduit to creating feelings in viewers.