Nothing gets political nerds more excited than an off-year special election. Pundits read the tea leaves to predict the outcome of the next election and political consultants spin results to calm their candidates’ nerves.
I’ll leave the forecasting to others, but I will periodically use this newsletter to deep dive into an election and pull out strategic takeaways we can use in 2026. First up: Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District’s Special Election.
Why did TN-7 matter?
Last week we saw the uphill battle Democrats face to take control of the Senate. The House is more in reach.
Democrats only need to flip 5 districts to unseat Speaker Johnson. With strong Democrat performances in Virginia, New Jersey, and California this November, confidence is growing.
Enter TN-7, a seat vacated by Mark Green, and a Trump +22 District in 2024. Democrats smelled blood when their candidate, Aftyn Behn, pulled within 2 points.
In the end, Republican Matt Van Epps won the district by 9 points, a 13 point swing from 2024. But not before a total of $5.8M was poured into the district.
Who were the voters?
180K voted in the Special. We’re still waiting for the final voter information, but prior to the election, our team at Cross Screen Media predicted a turnout of 176K. Pretty good!
64% reachable on TV
85% reachable on ad-supported streaming
13% not reachable on the TV Screen
25% of the audience consume both light TV and light CTV. These are the hardest voters to reach at scale. They are consuming very little of each medium.
How did the Parties spend money?
Several groups spent in this race. Of the $5.8M spent, the Republican groups outspent Democrats $3.4M to $2.4M.
How were voters reached?
Now let’s take a look at how the two sides, with all advertisers, reached these voters. For now, we’ll only look at Linear TV since CTV/Digital competitive reporting is not currently available. Yet.
From 11/3-12/2, we tracked 7M TV impressions served to Likely Voters in TN-7.
Reach was about even, with ~40% of the audience seeing at least one ad on TV from both sides.
Of the voters who saw an ad on TV, they saw Republican ads an average of 96 times and the Democrat ads 75 times.
That’s a lot! Remember, this is average frequency.
Want to see this for your campaign? Let us know.
How does viewership factor?
In Impressions to Ballots #4 we saw how concentrated viewership was. Here’s a real world example.
For simplicity, let’s just look at Republican ads. The trend is the same on the other side.
Audience Tier | % Audience | Reach | Frequency | Impressions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Heavy TV | 24% | 74% | 171 | 3M |
Light TV | 39% | 65% | 44 | 1M |
None | 37% | 0% | 0 | 0 |
Total | 100% | 41% | 96 | 4M |
18% of the audience saw 75% of all TV ads! And they saw the ad 171 times on average, or 42 times per week.
Remember political advertisers typically want the audience to see the ad 10-12 times per week.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Measure - Understand how campaigns reach audiences and optimize across screens and networks. Don’t be afraid to move budgets, even if it means upsetting vendors.
Fox News Channel and SEC Network tied in reach to Republicans.
Segment Audiences - Media plans should reflect viewership habits of the audience. In TN-7, Heavy TV viewers should have received much less digital frequency than Light and None Tiers.
No two races are the same - The same audience of likely voters in a different district will consume media differently. Don’t use cookie cutter plans.