We are one week away from Election Day 2026!
Anyone who has worked in political advertising knows the final-week scramble. A campaign brings in late fundraising dollars and asks, “How do we spend this money most effectively?”
At this point, 28M people have voted nationwide. TV spots are unavailable or won’t get up in time. The last mail drops have already happened.
Let’s say you’re in a toss-up congressional district with another $100K to spend. Where does it go?
What is your goal in the final week?
Incremental votes.
This is a midterm election. Without a presidential race at the top of the ticket, we expect 20–30M fewer votes than in 2024.
Every campaign has a vote goal: 50% + 1 of the expected turnout.
Your base gets you part of the way there. These voters are highly likely to turn out and vote for you. Closing the gap depends on two groups:
Persuadable Voters: Likely to vote, but need convincing to vote for you.
Turnout Voters: Likely to support you, but may not vote.
Key question: What group can you move in the final week?
In 2024, 10 congressional races were decided by fewer than 6,000 votes.
What’s been the campaign’s primary strategy so far?
Campaigns are local operations. Every district needs its own strategy to break through.
Internal polling and feedback from the field should tell you where the race stands and which issues matter to different voter groups.
Many campaigns spend much of their time and ad dollars on persuadable voters. Both sides are inundating those voters with ads, so moving them takes time and frequency.
Key Questions: Have you saturated your persuadable audience? Will another one to three impressions move them?
CA-13 and IA-2 were both decided by fewer than 1,000 votes in 2024, but their voter makeups are very different.
Who has already voted?
Early voting is hard to use to predict the winner. But it can help you decide where to deploy resources in the final week.
As of today, 28M people have voted nationwide. Each state has different early voting windows, methods, and historical patterns.
As voter records update, we can match voters back to our vote goal model.
Key Question: Are my voters turning out early based on my modeled expectations?
IA-3: 50K votes cast, 89% of expected at this point
CA-13: 29K votes cast, 109% of expected at this point
How would we spend our additional $100K?
There is no single right answer. But in a close election, you can’t afford to throw money at the wall and hope it works.
Let’s say we know our vote goal and which voters we need. We’ve been advertising to persuadable voters since Labor Day. Early votes are coming in, but our turnout audience is slightly behind expectations.
The goal is still the same: as many incremental votes as possible.
Here are some options:
Text voting reminders with key issue language to outstanding turnout voters during early voting and leading up to Election Day.
Increase paid door knocking to make an additional in-person contact with outstanding voters.
Place targeted digital ads to turnout voters, excluding early voters, on a network you have underutilized.
Use paid search ads to drive voters to your GOTV site when they are looking for where and when to vote.
Buy streaming content you know your outstanding voters consume.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
You still have time. Late money and strategy changes will come; everyone is tired; run through Election Day.
Use holistic voter contact strategies. Texting, door knocking, or digital could be the best places to add incremental votes.
Know your voters. Your models are great, but voters are giving you real signals now that early voting is happening.