If you live anywhere near a close race, you know the drill. You sit down to watch the evening news, and before the first commercial break ends, you’ve been told that both candidates are liars, crooks and a threat to everything you hold dear.
I’ve been watching these ads for more than 50 years, and I can’t name one that changed my vote. Turns out I’m not special. The research says most of us aren’t being swayed.
Here’s the bill for all that noise. Ad tracker AdImpact projects political advertising in the 2026 cycle will hit $11.6 billion, the most ever. That tops the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential cycle and runs about 30% above the old midterm record of $8.9 billion, set in 2022.
So what are donors getting for their money? Not much. A study of 49 field experiments, published in the American Political Science Review in 2018, concluded that the best estimate of how much campaign contact and advertising sway votes in general elections is zero.
Zero.
The ads may do slightly better at one thing: getting people to the polls. Katherine Haenschen, an associate professor of communication studies and political science at Northeastern University, told the school’s news service th...