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Launched in 2006, Epolitics is written and edited by Colin Delany, who has helped nonprofits and political campaigns use digital tools in effective and creative ways since the early days of the political internet. He is also a frequent speaker and trainer and the author of How to Use the Internet to Change the World – and Win Elections. Contact him at cpd@epolitics.com.
2026: Finding the Limits of Political Money (Again)
$10,400,000,000. $10,400,000,000. That’s about how much a political ad-monitoring firm recently predicted that political parties, campaigns and their allies will spend in 2026. Just to buy digital, TV and radio ads for the midterms. As Max Greenwood observed at Campaigns & Elections,
The forecast underscores how media spending in U.S. elections has surged in recent decades. Michigan alone is projected to absorb over $1 billion in political advertising in 2026 – more than the entire country saw during the 2006 midterm cycle. The Atlanta area is expected to be the most expensive media market this year, with an estimated $591 million in political ad spending, according to KPI’s forecast.
$10.4 billion is a lot, and it’s not too far below the $11.2 billion spent in the presidential year of 2024. But it’s still “only” a 17% increase from the 2022 midterms, when political groups spent about $8.9 billion on media.
Most of this year’s political money will go right into the fight for Congress, with state legislative races seeing an estimated $729 million by comparison. Budgets in local races will likely amount to a rounding error in the Congressional context, putting the rough total for House and Senate somewhere somewhere in the neighborhood of $9.5 billion.
Can You Even Spend That Much Money?
Campaigns, PACs and Independent Expenditure groups will spend that money in different ways than we would have a decade ago. A quarter or so should go to ads on streaming services (CTV), a massive increase since 2020. Broadcast TV and cable will suck up more billions of dollars, but their star is fading — they’ll drop as a percentage of the overall budget. Radio ads seem to be on the outs, with spending forecast at perhaps $300 million. We’ll see where non-TV digital video ads come in, since they’ll get a lot of the spillover when premium venues run dry.
But hold on a minute. Can campaigns and their allies spend that much money efficiently? Can they even spend it at all? Just short of ten million people live in Michigan, for example, meaning that campaigns could spend about $100 per resident — just on ads. About 4.5 million Michiganders turned out in the last midterm year, putting media spending closer to $200 per actual voter. Across the country, a perhaps eight or nine Senate races and 30-50 House races will command the bulk of the budget. And most of that money will be spent over a couple of months in the fall.
TV can absorb a lot of money, but come September, TV stations, cable providers and streaming services will surely run short of ad slots to sell, particularly since many popular streamers don’t allow political ads. Similarly, inventory on Facebook/Instagram, YouTube and other digital favorites will either evaporate or become punishingly expensive — particularly if you’re targeting the same voter lists everyone else is.
Bigger picture: how much help are any of our ads when people tune them out? Even if your content grabs the heart and seduces the mind, does it make a difference when someone sees it for the 200th or 300th time? Kamala Harris and her allies spent about $2 billion to try to put her in the White House in 2024, more money than any campaign before it. Worked great, right?
Her campaign demonstrated quite clearly that money alone can’t elect someone if the environment is wrong, or the voters don’t buy what you’re selling. Cash CAN be decisive, particularly if the race is really close or one side vastly outspends the other. But it’s just one factor influencing the results.
Not that I think campaigns should financially disarm! But as the system approaches the practical limits of political media spending, we should definitely try to diversify:
- Allocate budget to put field organizers on the ground early, not in October, for all the reasons we’ve covered before. Likewise, invest in volunteer recruiting and training, and do it early.
- Connect with influencers who speak to audiences in your district, using paid outreach or by allocating staff time to building relationships.
- Deploy relational organizing tools to allow you to reach voters through friends and family. Information from people we already trust may be one of the few things that can break through the clutter this year.
- Look for less conventional channels, such as audio ads on podcasts or ads on digital billboards and other public screens.
- Consider advertising on local media, including radio and the websites and streaming channels of local TV stations and newspapers (if newspapers still exist where you’re running). Radio naturally breaks down into demographic segments, people in some communities spend a lot of time listening to it, and it can be cost-effective.
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Above all, campaigns should talk to people face-to-face, whether by going to specific doors or by camping outside the local grocery store.
Donors face a different question: where should I put my dollars? With so much money flowing to federal campaigns, consider going down-ballot. A $100 donation to a U.S. Senate campaign isn’t even a drop in the bucket, but it might really help a candidate for state legislature or city council.
A final consideration: a 15% commission is typical for firms buying political media. Under this kind of arrangement, a relative handful of companies could earn upwards of a billion dollars in 2026! Most grassroots donors would be offended by the notion that fifteen cents of every dollar they give will be siphoned off by political consultants. What would they think if they knew that managing a $5 million streaming ad buy is not THAT much harder than managing one a fraction of the cost?
Donors deserve to know that their money will go to help elect someone, not to boost the bank accounts of a select group of political consultants. Of course we should compensate media-buyers, but they shouldn’t get to live like lottery winners. No matter how big the budgets get in 2026.
— cpd