Midterms 2026Answers · Campaigns
Do TV ads still work in political campaigns?
Yes, mostly. TV ads still reach a large audience of older, regular voters in one go, and campaigns still spend a huge share of their budgets on them. But research on persuasion generally finds that the effect of any single ad on any single voter is small.
Why campaigns keep buying TV
Television reaches people who vote. Older Americans watch more broadcast and cable TV, and they turn out in higher numbers than younger voters, especially in midterms. For a campaign trying to reach a lot of likely voters at once, TV is still hard to beat.
It also builds name recognition fast. For a candidate nobody has heard of, a few weeks of ads can move them from unknown to familiar, and that matters before anything else can work.
Where TV falls short
- It's expensive. Prices in big media markets are high, and a lot of the audience lives outside the district or doesn't vote
- It's blunt. You can't easily aim it at one kind of voter the way you can with digital or mail
- It fades. Effects from an ad tend to wear off within days or weeks, so campaigns have to keep repeating it
- Viewers are shrinking. More people stream, skip ads or watch on their phones
Because of that, many campaigns now split spending across TV, streaming, digital, mail and field work.
What makes an ad work
The ads that seem to land share a few traits. They're simple, they have one clear idea, and they put a face and a voice on it. An ad that tries to say five things says none of them.
I also think timing matters more than people credit. A burst in the final weeks, when more voters are paying attention, can do more than the same money spread out for months.
What I'd do
With a small budget, I'd skip broad TV in an expensive market and aim for cheaper, targeted channels. With a large one, I'd use TV for name recognition and reserve the rest for turnout.
In my free iPhone game Midterms 2026, going on TV is one of the actions you can take each turn, next to rallies, state offices and meeting citizens. You only get so many actions and so much campaign money, so every ad is a choice against something else. That tension is close to the real one.
The short version
- TV still reaches older, high-turnout voters in bulk
- Any single ad has a small effect, and it fades quickly
- It works best as one tool among several, not the whole plan