In 2026, Ohio is a battleground again.
In 2024, President Trump won the state for the third time, carrying it by 11 points. The Senate race was closer, with Bernie Moreno defeating Sherrod Brown by 5.6 points.
Former Sen. Sherrod Brown is back on the ballot this year in a special election. He is running against Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill the seat after J.D. Vance became vice president.
So far, the race is close. Cook Political Report rates it as a toss-up, and Polymarket gives Brown a slight edge with a 54% chance of winning.
The race has become ground zero for the data center debate spreading across the country. Brown has made data centers the centerpiece of his advertising, putting Husted’s pro-AI record as lieutenant governor front and center.
Money has poured into the state on both sides. We’ll take a closer look at the ad spend over the first two weeks of August, when spending really heated up.
Who had the spending advantage?
Advertising spend was shockingly even over the first two weeks of August.
Republican: $13.2M
Democratic: $13.4M
What groups spent the most?
Republican spending was led by the outside group One Nation. On the Democratic side, the Brown campaign led spending, closely followed by the outside group Duty and Honor.
The NRSC and Husted have started to spend jointly. This is a direct result of the Supreme Court decision on campaign-committee coordination.
How do Likely Voters consume media in Ohio?
Ohio voters are split across linear and streaming. Of the 5.7 million likely voters, 29% don’t watch linear TV, including 14% who can still be reached through streaming. Another 15% watch neither.
In Columbus, streaming reaches 15% more likely voters. That pattern flipped in Wheeling–Steubenville, an older and more rural media market.
That difference matters because broadcast television (47% of spend) cannot be geographically targeted within a media market. Campaigns must adopt a market-by-market strategy to maximize voter contact efficiently.
We discussed this in detail back in Impressions to Ballots 12 - Do digital buyers need to understand media markets?
How have broadcast campaigns reached likely voters?
Among likely 2026 voters statewide, the two sides are dead even in broadcast reach, but Republicans lead in raw impressions.
Taken together, this has driven frequency to 34x for Republicans and 28x for Democrats in just two weeks.
Looking into Party-specific reach, 41% of Likely Voters have seen both ads. 2% have seen only Republican ads, and 2% have seen only Democrat ads.
Who is seeing the most ads?
25% of the audience is receiving 66% of Republican Broadcast Impressions.
With no frequency caps on TV, heavy viewers are repeatedly exposed while lighter viewers remain harder to reach.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Build voter-contact plans around viewership. Impressions and frequency are not distributed evenly. Don’t waste budget by hitting the same voters too many times, while missing others.
Plan TV and streaming market-by-market. Viewership and TV efficiency vary by market. Heavy up on digital/streaming in markets where TV is not driving efficient reach.
Measure reach and optimize budget across screens. CSM customers see one reach number across TV, streaming, and digital. Budget moves in real time to maximize reach at controlled frequency.
Next week, we will dive into the eCPM of these ads to compare the real cost of reaching voters.