Elon’s large checks from 2024 aside, would you accept $516 to vote for a candidate?
Well, that offer is not on the table, but it is roughly the price that the political market has placed on a persuadable voter in 2026.
How important are persuadable voters?
The 2024 Presidential Election, was decided by 229,766 votes. The combined number of votes by which Team Harris lost PA, MI, and WI. Flipping those three states would have flipped the Electoral College.
The number one question 2026 campaigns are asking now is: What voters do we need to win?
Here’s the problem. Many ad sellers I speak with don’t understand how campaigns do this. Have you ever heard: we aren’t scaling, can we expand the audience?
Every media plan, audience, and budget allocation decision stems from your vote goal.
How is vote goal determined?
Simply put, campaigns have to figure out how many votes they need to get to 50%+1 on Election Night (or Election Month if you live in California).
Here are the basic criteria to determine your political audiences:
Estimate Turnout - The number of people you expect to vote. Possibly the most important number as its the denominator for all further segmentation.
Determine likelihood to vote - Within estimated turnout there are voters who never miss an election and others who will need some convincing to show up.
Determine Partisanship by voter - Estimate or score each voter on how you expect them to vote.
Once you have every voter scored on this criteria, segment voters into:
Will likely vote and vote for my candidate
Will likely not vote, but would vote from my candidate if they do vote
Will likely vote and needs to be persuaded to vote for my candidate
Pick the voters that give you the best shot of getting to 50%+1 and determine your outreach strategy.
Here’s a look at where all Registered Voters fall on on the Party Affiliation, Turnout Matrix.
How many persuadable voters are there in 2026?
In order to hit their vote goal, competitive campaigns will need to persuade some voters.
9% of Registered Voters are persuadable and likely to vote in 2026.
$516 - amount spent per Likely Persuadable Voter.
What audiences will decide the House?
Last week, we saw how close the race for the House is going into 2026. Cook Political Report estimates that there are 17 Toss Up House Seats.
5 are currently Dem held, 12 are Rep held.
Beyond convincing persuadable voters to vote for your candidate, there are often other options to hit your vote goal. For example, convince registered voters who don’t typically vote to turn out.
296K - Number of voters in toss up districts that likely voted for President Trump in 2024 AND did not vote in any November Elections since 2014.
For Republican campaigns, it may be easier to turn out these voters than to persuade others.
Persuadable voters and low propensity Trump voters are very different audiences that care about different issues. Effective audience segmentation is vital to deliver the right message to each audience.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Track waste - Every impression that goes to someone outside your audiences are wasted resources. Efficient campaigns can be outspent and still reach more voters than inefficient opponents.
Targeting Technology Matters - Work with buyers who understand how to effectively target voters. Track match rates and how many impressions are actually hitting the audience.
Segment - Understand the issues your audience cares about and segment the audience to deliver messages that resonate.
Audiences available to CSM’s customers: Battleground Data Audiences Taxonomy
Next week we’ll discuss how to compare inventory sources based on efficiency.