Advertising
Two Blocks in Pennsylvania Show Why It’s So Hard for Campaigns to Reach Voters
New York Times
“Campaigns are spending millions papering the region with fliers and airing television ads almost constantly. But the residents here, like many Americans, are more unreachable than ever.”
Campaigns
Can a Friend’s Selfie Save a GOTV Mailer From the Trash Can?
Campaigns & Elections
“In most cases, those mailers are cast into trash cans and recycling bins, often without a second thought. But one nonprofit is betting that voters are less likely to ignore those mailers if their friends’ faces are printed on the front.”
Who’s Winning the Podcast Midterms? Podcast Data on the 2026 Elections
Rephonic
“Democratic candidates have made 3,565 podcast appearances this year to the Republicans’ 2,987, and their shows add up to more estimated listeners, 75 million to 37 million.”
Fundraising
The hidden GOP fundraising weakness is getting worse
POLITICO
“The number of federal donors giving through WinRed, the major GOP online fundraising platform, is down, with roughly 1.5 million donors so far this cycle compared to 2.2 million at this time in 2022. Meanwhile the number of donors has increased by about one third on ActBlue, from 4.9 million to roughly 6.6 million.”
Democratic Digital Firm Authentic to Shutter by Year’s End
Campaigns & Elections
“Authentic’s coming closure also means that its staff will be without work in just over a couple months. They’ll be hitting the job market right as potential 2028 presidential hopefuls are gearing up for their campaigns.”
Social Media
1 in 5 Americans Regularly Get News on TikTok
Pew Research Center
“Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (22%) are slightly more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners (15%) to regularly get news on TikTok.”
Picking fights and going viral: How Dems are targeting young voters online
Washington Post
“The DNC says that creators in the program have a cumulative following of more than 75 million and that the content they’ve made with DNC clips received more than 100 million impressions from mid-2025 to mid-2026.”
Technology
AI and the 2028 Presidential
Josh Hendler
“Before you pay for a new software tool, test whether the AI your staff already uses can do the same job.”
AI is in the election headlines less. That doesn’t mean it matters less.
electionline
“If anything, the most important AI stories in elections may now be the ones that never make headlines: a county quietly using an AI tool to draft voter guidance, a chatbot giving a voter the wrong deadline, a fake video that circulates in a group chat and never reaches a reporter.”
AI is reshaping high-stakes elections around the world
Semafor
“Cybersecurity firms identified thousands of AI-generated websites purporting to be local US news sites, but ‘the sites are not written for voters,’ one firm noted: ‘They are written for the AI systems voters ask.’”
Can you trust a chatbot to make you a voter guide? We put them to the test.
Washington Post
“The chatbots failed to say which congressional district an address was in 48 percent of the time, even though every voter will have a House race on their midterm ballot. The AI-generated voter guides that did specify a district got it wrong 22 percent of the time, telling voters they had to consider candidates they cannot vote for.”
America Is About to See What Happens When Voters Turn to AI
The Atlantic
“In a forthcoming report, Forum AI, a start-up that evaluates AI models’ performance on questions about controversial topics, found that about 40 percent of chatbots’ answers to election-related questions contained at least one factual inaccuracy.”