Political advertising has never been a simple undertaking. It demands strategic precision, creative discipline, and the ability to move quickly in an environment where the rules, the platforms, and the electorate itself seem to shift by the day. The 2026 US midterm elections promise all of that and more, and they’re arriving at a moment when the political advertising landscape has been fundamentally reshaped by the rapid evolution of connected TV, the maturation of streaming audio, the rise of AI-assisted creative and optimization tools, and deep uncertainty around redistricting, candidate turnover, and an increasingly fragmented media environment.
This guide is designed to help political advertisers—including campaigns, causes, consultants, and agencies—navigate what lies ahead. Whether you're managing a statewide senate race, running a closely contested congressional district, or promoting a ballot measure campaign, the insights here are designed to be actionable, practical, and grounded in the realities of the 2026 election cycle.
Key Takeaways for Political Advertising in 2026
With control of both the House and the Senate up for grabs, the 2026 elections are expected to be the most expensive midterm cycle in US history. Political ad spending for the year is projected to hit $10.8 billion, a 20%+ increase over the last midterms held in 2022.
The backdrop for this fall’s elections is unusually complex. Beyond the anticipated referendum on an unpopular president, a wave of congressional retirements—early estimates suggest approximately 10% of sitting members may not seek reelection—is creating an unusually large number of open-seat races where neither candidate enters with the name recognition and voter relationships of an established incumbent. At the same time, redistricting proceedings are underway in several key states, including California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah, with the potential to redraw competitive boundaries heading into the cycle.
The implications for political advertisers are significant. Open-seat races typically require heavier investment in early awareness and fundraising, since candidates cannot rely on existing voter relationships to carry their message. And in races where redistricting has created entirely new districts, voters may find themselves represented by a candidate they have never heard of, making name recognition advertising even more critical in the early campaign phase.
"I think everything's up for grabs," says Jackie Huelbig McLaughlin, VP of Candidates & Causes at Basis.
Watch List: Redistricting is underway in California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah. Campaigns in these states should plan for a shifting competitive landscape and prioritize early awareness investment.
The political benefits of redistricting will ultimately be state-dependent, and predictions around competitiveness in those districts will be somewhat difficult to make until primaries clarify the field. Either way, campaigns in affected states should not assume that historical spending patterns or targeting approaches will translate to the new map. Early investment in audience research and media planning will pay dividends later.
Additionally, the retirement wave, in particular, is likely to make primaries more competitive across the board. Candidates who might have had a clear path in a race against a known incumbent now face crowded fields where early advertising, grassroots organizing, and digital presence can be decisive. For campaigns with limited budgets, this means making hard choices about where to allocate early dollars—and recognizing that earned media, organic social, and community presence may play an outsized role in building momentum before paid media becomes the primary vehicle.
Every election cycle teaches the industry something new, and 2024 was no exception. Among the most instructive contrasts of the last presidential race was the divergence in how the Trump and Harris campaigns approached their paid digital advertising in the campaign's final stretch. The Trump campaign, hamstrung by budgetary restrictions, was highly selective with their media buys: If they knew a voter was already in their corner, that voter simply wasn't seeing their ads. The Harris campaign, meanwhile, was “throwing spaghetti against the wall,” says Huelbig McLaughlin—having entered the race late and operating under time pressure, they took a broader approach, running significantly more volume across more audiences in the hopes that something would connect.
In 2026, knowing your audience before you spend will be key to maximizing political advertising budgets. Heading into a midterm cycle—where the margin for error is increasingly narrow—campaigns cannot afford to waste impressions on voters who are already committed. “The goal,” says Huelbig McLaughlin, “should be to stretch the dollars in a very mindful way" through disciplined targeting and a thoughtful media mix.
This philosophy will define the most competitive 2026 races. Campaigns that invest early in understanding their voter base—who needs persuasion, who needs activation, and who is already a lost cause—will be the ones best positioned to allocate their media dollars efficiently when spending peaks in October and November.
The fundamental rhythm of the political advertising spending cycle has not changed: awareness and fundraising in the early months, a building cadence through the summer, and then an all-out sprint from Labor Day through Election Day. Basis data from the 2024 election found that 48% of digital ad budgets were spent in the final 30 days before Election Day, with nearly half of that concentrated in the final 10 days of the campaign.
Early in the cycle—through primaries and into the summer—the goal is awareness: getting the candidate's name and core message in front of as broad an audience as possible. Then, as Election Day approaches, the objective shifts to precision: Identifying the specific persuadable voters who haven't committed, reaching them with the right frequency, and getting out the vote. These two objectives require different channel strategies, different targeting approaches, and different creative executions.
In 2026, the dynamics of that late-cycle sprint will be shaped by two intersecting factors: the aforementioned volume of competitive races created by redistricting and retirements, and the growing supply of premium CTV inventory. In races where multiple well-funded campaigns are all racing to reach the same undecided voters in the final weeks, the premium on reserving inventory early cannot be overstated.
Budget Strategy and Timing Tips:
Political advertisers have long operated in a more constrained targeting environment than their commercial counterparts. But some restrictions on audience targeting for election ads on platforms like Google and Meta, coupled with state-by-state regulatory variations, can make audience strategy an increasingly complex, jurisdiction-specific exercise.
In this environment, geopolitical targeting has become an increasingly important tool. Basis data from the 2022 midterms showed that nearly 20% of political programmatic ads used geopolitical targeting to reach voters in specific districts—with 51% using congressional district targeting and 32% using state senate district targeting. With third-party cookie deprecation having largely reshaped the programmatic targeting landscape, these geography-based approaches have only grown more prominent in the last four years.
Beyond geotargeting, identifying ways to more precisely reach undecided voters remains the political targeting holy grail: Who are they, where do they live, what do they watch, what are their passions? In districts where redistricting has created new competitive dynamics—and where an anticipated referendum on an increasingly-unpopular president has loomed over many races—this kind of audience intelligence work is especially valuable, as the old assumptions about which precincts are reliably red or blue may no longer apply.
Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) data from smart TV manufacturers, combined with programmatic targeting capabilities on CTV platforms, offers one of the most compelling answers to this challenge. Campaigns can now reach households based on their actual viewing behavior—not inferred demographic proxies—and serve political messages in contextually appropriate environments at the moment those households are most engaged.
Speaking of which…
Connected television (CTV) has been the hottest digital channel of the past several election cycles, and 2026 will be no different. While broadcast television will remain the single largest channel for political ad spend at $5.3 billion, CTV is projected to rank second at $2.48 billion—and, tellingly, is the only segment expected to show meaningful growth. For political advertisers who have already internalized the case for CTV, the challenge is now to invest more effectively given an increasingly crowded and complex inventory landscape.
The fundamental appeal of CTV has always been its ability to deliver the emotional and persuasive power of television-style video with the precision targeting capabilities of digital. And with the number of cord-cutters and “cord-nevers” growing by the year, campaigns must approach CTV as a distinct and valuable channel to complement their linear efforts, as the audiences for each TV-consumption method are increasingly divergent.
There is now a sizable subset of undecided and swing voters who are only reachable via connected TV. This audience of individuals who are not watching broadcast or cable skews younger, and is generally associated with urban and higher-income audiences. But audiences of all kinds are making the switch from cable to connected TV, making it increasingly critical to an array of midterm races in competitive districts.
Case in point: “My parents and in-laws in their 70s all cut the cord this year and are relying entirely on YouTube TV or Hulu TV,” says Huelbig McLaughlin. “The cord-cutting age is going up."
Key Data Point: $2.48 billion: Forecast CTV political ad spend in 2026—the only digital channel projected to grow this year. (Source: AdImpact)
In recent election cycles, the gap between demand for political CTV advertising and the available supply constrained campaigns' ability to fully exploit the channel—particularly in premium environments.
Fortunately for CTV-hungry political advertisers, that gap is narrowing rapidly, and 2026 is poised to be the first US election where CTV inventory meets the market’s needs.
More and more streaming platforms and publishers are now accepting (if not outright welcoming) political and advocacy advertising. The shift is fueled, in part, by the proliferation of smart TV apps that come pre-loaded on devices from manufacturers like LG, Samsung, and Vizio. These OEM (original equipment manufacturer) platforms operate their own owned-and-operated channels—including free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels—and are opening up significant new inventory.
Additionally, companies like Disney have opened up valuable inventory across many of its platforms, such as Hulu and ESPN—a particularly notable development for campaigns targeting sports-adjacent audiences—to go along with growing opportunities across DIRECTV, HBO Max, Paramount, and other premium providers.
Live sports inventory, in particular, have increasingly migrated to streaming platforms and offer particularly high value, with the FIFA World Cup, NFL, college football, MLB, and other major sports events providing exactly the kind of broad, engaged audience that campaigns are always eager to reach.
But the streaming story goes beyond mere supply: ACR data generated by smart TVs is making targeting dramatically more sophisticated, with tens of millions of Americans having opted in to sharing data about what is displayed on their screens. This creates rich household-level viewing data that advertisers can use to reach audiences based on the content they actually consume—whether that’s live sports, their favorite shows, or even specific streaming services.
Campaigns that want to maximize their CTV presence in 2026 should plan to use a mix of buying approaches rather than relying on any single method. Programmatic open exchange, private marketplace deals, and programmatic guaranteed each offer different tradeoffs in terms of pricing, inventory access, and targeting precision. As demand surges in October and inventory tightens dramatically in competitive markets, campaigns that have locked in favorable PMP or programmatic guaranteed pricing in advance will have a significant edge over those relying solely on the open exchange.
In most congressional districts, sufficient inventory exists—but only if campaigns plan strategically and secure access before peak season.
Key Takeaways
Campaigns looking to make the most of CTV advertising opportunities should:
If CTV has been the marquee channel story of recent cycles, streaming audio is shaping up to be one of the defining new opportunities of 2026. Audio represented just 1% of political ad spend in the 2022 midterms and 3% during the 2024 election season (most of which was radio) despite the average voter spending 21.2% of their total media time consuming audio, representing a significant underexplored opportunity.
With workers having increasingly returned to offices (and their accompanying commutes) in recent years, audio consumption is rising in kind. The medium is uniquely well-positioned to reach voters during screen-free moments: In the car, on a commute, during a workout, while cleaning the house. Podcast listenership, in particular, has demonstrated itself increasingly resonant across key voter demographics, delivering outsized political impact. And with programmatic buying now available even for broadcast radio inventory, the barriers that once made audio difficult to activate at scale have largely been removed.
While targeted podcast advertising at scale remains somewhat nascent, the streaming audio opportunity through platforms like Spotify and iHeart is very real—and growing. Basis’ Jaime Vasil (Group VP, Candidates & Causes) anticipates meaningful growth in streaming audio political spend this cycle, and campaigns that are early movers in the channel stand to benefit from both lower CPMs and less competitive inventory than they will find in CTV.
Beyond inventory, the emergence of streaming audio reflects a key shift in the ways media consumption has changed in the past several years. Voters have moved from passively consuming programming at a specific, scheduled time (and on a specific, dedicated channel) to actively constructing their own media environments across an array of mediums—combining on-demand streaming services with live sports, podcasts, social video, and background audio throughout the day. Effective political advertising in 2026 will need to follow voters into all of those environments rather than waiting for them to find you.
“People are now curating and consuming their own personalized entertainment menus across different channels and different timeframes,” says Huelbig McLaughlin. “And as political advertisers, we’re going to have to crack that.”
One of the more nuanced conversations in political advertising heading into 2026 concerns the relationship between paid media and organic digital content—and, specifically, whether the viral social media success stories of recent cycles are broadly replicable for candidates in smaller or less urban markets.
The impetus for the discussion, of course, is newly elected New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose authentic, personality-driven TikTok and Instagram content generated outsized organic reach among younger voters. The appeal is obvious: Organic content costs relatively little, can generate significant reach, and communicates a kind of authenticity that traditional political advertising often struggles to replicate.
The question, then, is whether the “Mamdani effect” will grow and influence campaigns this midterm cycle?
While the content itself is undeniably fresh and engaging, Vasil offers an important caution: "It's sometimes more about the candidate than the tactics." Mamdani was a young candidate living in Queens, genuinely relatable to the digital-native voters he was trying to reach. The same approach deployed by a candidate in a rural congressional district—or by any candidate who lacks the natural charisma or cultural fluency to pull it off—is unlikely to produce the same results. Trump's social media dominance, for example, was built on 25+ years of name recognition accumulated through television and business ventures—something that’s not exactly replicable for most candidates.
That said, authentic organic social content will likely become increasingly important for candidates seeking to connect with voters under 55. The key word there is "authentic," as voters—particularly younger ones—are highly attuned to content that feels manufactured or performative. The opportunity is real, but campaigns should resist the temptation to force organic content that doesn't fit the candidate's actual personality and voice.
The practical strategic implication is for campaigns to use organic social to establish their voice, generate earned media, and raise early awareness and funds—particularly for less-known candidates in the primary phase—while investing those raised funds into disciplined paid media as the general election approaches.
When it comes to creative, far too many campaigns still embrace an outdated mindset: Developing a polished 30-second television spot, then repurposing it across digital channels without thinking through adaptation, context, or modern attention spans.
But in the current media environment, that approach is no longer fit for purpose. Or, as Huelbig McLaughlin puts it succinctly: "People need to stop creating ads for linear TV and thinking that they translate directly to digital."
The fundamental challenge is attention. Whether a voter is watching CTV, scrolling through social content, or listening to a podcast, they are in an inherently different cognitive mode than a traditional broadcast television viewer. Attention spans are shorter, and the threshold for capturing interest is higher. A 30-second ad that might work perfectly in the context of an evening news broadcast may fail to register on a streaming platform where the viewer can skip, mute, or simply look away.
Effective creative in 2026 will require campaigns to develop platform-adapted versions of their messaging: the 30-second anchor spot for broadcast and premium CTV, a 15-second cut optimized for digital video, and a six-second bumper designed to work as a pure impression. The good news is that AI-assisted creative tools are making this kind of versioning more accessible and less expensive than it has ever been.
The greatest looming constraint here, of course, is budget. A campaign with $50,000 in media budget, for instance, is going to approach creative testing very differently than one with $500,000 a month. But even resource-constrained campaigns can benefit from a few guiding principles: Lead with the most important message in the first three seconds, design for sound-off viewing on social, and ensure that every creative asset has a clear and singular call to action.
Political Advertising Creative Best Practices:
Artificial intelligence has become impossible to ignore in any conversation about marketing, and political advertising is no exception. But there is a significant gap between the hype around AI and the practical reality of what it can actually do well for political campaigns, and understanding that distinction is essential for campaigns trying to make smart decisions about where to invest in AI capabilities.
The areas where AI creates the most tangible value for political advertisers in 2026 generally fall into two broad categories: campaign optimization and creative development.
On the optimization side, AI-powered bidding and campaign management tools offer real efficiency and ROAS gains for campaigns managing complex multi-channel buys. AI can process far more data signals than any human media buyer, adjusting bids and allocations in near-real-time based on performance data. For campaigns running programmatic CTV, audio, display, native, search, and/or social simultaneously, this kind of automated optimization can meaningfully improve performance without requiring additional headcount.
On the creative side, AI is becoming a reliable tool for creative testing and iteration. The ability to quickly generate multiple versions of ad copy, test different message framings with focus groups or panel research, and identify which creative elements are resonating—at a speed and cost that would have been prohibitive even a few years ago—is a real competitive advantage. "Using AI for creative testing is going to add meaningful efficiency and effectiveness gains," says Vasil.
Of course, the risks of AI in political advertising are also quite real, and campaigns should approach the technology with appropriate care.
Perhaps the most significant concern is AI-generated content that misleads voters—whether through deepfakes, manipulated audio, or fabricated quotes attributed to real candidates and officials. This concern, sadly, is no longer hypothetical: The technology required to produce convincing deepfake content is now widely accessible, and bad actors will almost certainly use it in the 2026 cycle.
Meanwhile, on the compliance side of the equation, platform policies around AI disclosure are moving quickly. Google already requires political advertisers to disclose any use of AI in their ads, and similar requirements are likely to proliferate across platforms. Meta does the same, albeit in only certain circumstances. And a UChicago Harris/AP-NORC Poll found that voters strongly prefer that political ads disclose any use of AI, a finding that should help curb any temptations to omit disclosures even where they are not yet required.
The regulatory approach to AI usage in political advertising remains somewhat of a moving target, but the directional trend points toward greater transparency, more required disclosures, and tighter platform enforcement. Campaigns that build disclosure compliance into their workflow now will be better positioned as requirements evolve.
Misinformation has had a prominent presence in every recent election cycle, but AI is changing its character.
The same tools that make it easier to test creative messages and generate ad variations can also be used to produce misleading content at scale and speed that would have been impossible just a few years ago. With trust in news sources and political information already eroding, the 2026 cycle will require campaigns to actively work to build and maintain credibility with voters who are increasingly skeptical of everything they see.
In an environment where voters are increasingly questioning what is real and making personal decisions about what constitutes “fact” vs. “opinion,” campaigns need to demonstrate their authenticity through more than just advertising. Being visible in communities, having candidates with verifiable records and clear commitments, and using paid media to amplify genuine moments rather than manufactured ones can help create foundations of trust that advertising can subsequently reinforce and build upon.
Additionally, brand safety tools from verified partners remain essential for ensuring that campaign ads are not serving alongside misinformation or appearing in contexts that could damage the campaign's credibility. Tools from providers like Comscore and Peer39 offer contextual controls that should be standard practice for any political media buy.
But importantly, campaigns cannot count on technology alone to handle the misinformation problem on their behalf. Trust and safety teams at major tech companies have been substantially reduced in recent years, and while platforms continue to invest in automated content moderation, the volume and sophistication of AI-generated misinformation is growing faster than defensive capabilities. Political advertisers need their own mitigation strategies—including clear messaging frameworks, rapid response protocols, and media buys designed to maintain a commanding share of voice in competitive markets—to better protect themselves against misinformation’s most prevalent risks.
Historically, dating back to 2016 and the Cambridge Analytica scandal that rocked Facebook, the regulatory environment for political advertising has consistently trended toward increasing restrictions, with platforms tightening rules around what creative they will accept, narrowing targeting options, and expanding disclosure requirements. In 2026, however, the picture is decidedly more mixed, with some meaningful new inventory openings debuting alongside continued compliance complexity.
On the positive side for political advertisers: Publishers are opening up more and more inventory to political and advocacy advertising, drawn to the category’s astronomic ad spending and sensing an opportunity to tap into a lucrative new revenue stream—particularly during this projected record-setting midterm cycle.
At the same time, many digital publishers have added newly-rigorous vetting and disclosure requirements. Advertiser verification, signed disclaimer forms, and detailed record-keeping are becoming standard, following the model that has long been standard practice across linear television.
Political advertisers will want to seek out partners with built-in compliance infrastructure and workflows, allowing platforms to capture the information needed for regulatory disclosure in a systematic, automated way that alleviates compliance concerns and streamlines media buys. Otherwise, campaigns that cannot demonstrate clean, documented compliance with platform policies and applicable state regulations risk having their ads pulled at the worst possible moment.
The 2026 midterms will be contested on a fundamentally different media landscape than any previous cycle. The combination of cord-cutting acceleration, CTV inventory expansion, streaming audio's growing political presence, AI-driven creative and optimization tools, redistricting uncertainty, and an unusually large cohort of first-time and open-seat candidates creates both significant challenges and significant opportunities for political advertisers.
The campaigns that succeed will be those that approach the cycle with intellectual humility, strategic discipline, and a willingness to learn from the latest data. And don't make assumptions about what worked in 2022 or 2024, either: The audience has changed, the platforms have changed, and the competitive map has changed along with them. Start early, invest in better understanding your voter universe, lock in premium inventory before the crunch, build for the screens and devices your voters are actually using, treat creative as a strategic asset rather than an afterthought, and seek out experienced advertising and technology partners to support you in your goals.
