Senate Democrats’ digital head start
Dem Senate candidates outraised + outspent their opponents online in 2022. They’re aiming for a repeat.
In 2024, Democrats face a daunting challenge in defending incumbent U.S. Senators from Montana to Ohio. Despite Election Day being over a year away, major Democratic campaigns are already spending heavily online to build their warchest and recreate a digital strategy their side deployed in 2022. I’ll break down the Democrats’ digital head start and more below, but first…
By the numbers
FWIW, here were the top-spending political advertisers on Facebook + Instagram last week:
The Republican State Leadership Committee, the national party group tasked with electing down-ballot Republicans, is running Facebook ads promoting Ron DeSantis’ new book. While it’s probably a smart digital marketing move to generate new donors for the committee, his rivals can’t be too happy about this.
Last week, I noted that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema had launched some fundraising ads on Facebook ahead of a likely re-election campaign. Now, her team has launched a new wave of advertising targeting Arizonans with news articles intended to shore up her support in the state. Folks, she’s running.
Meanwhile, here were the top-spending political advertisers on Google and YouTube last week:
On YouTube, House Majority Forward, a group allied with House Democrats, is running these brutal new ads targeting various vulnerable GOP House members on Social Security and Medicare:
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From around the internet
Dan Pfeiffer has some solid advice in
on how to use a diminished Twitter in the Elon era
Republicans in Congress are attempting to ban TikTok nationwide, due to widespread security concerns.
Right-wing media continues to attack the Biden administration on the East Palestine environmental crisis. Here's a glance at the top 100 Facebook posts over the past month about East Palestine, sorted by partisanship.
President Biden’s re-election campaign made a bit of a PR-move this week by bringing on “an advisory board” of major Democratic elected officials to serve as early surrogates.
2024 Dispatch
FWIW, here’s how much money likely or confirmed 2024 presidential candidates have spent on Facebook + Google ads to date (1/1 - 2/25):
Fetterman’s behind-the-scenes Slack operation
I’ve been in a lot of political Slack workspaces, and very few are as active as John Fetterman’s campaign Slack in the 2022 midterms. The campaign relied on the workplace messaging tool as its central hub for engaging volunteers - where staff would crowdsource memes, recruit volunteer shifts, and build a sense of community among supporters. At its peak, the Fetterman Slack workspace had over 9,000 members and extremely high levels of engagement and conversation.
In the latest installment of
, I spoke with Ryan Flanagan, Digital Organizing Director for the Fetterman campaign, on what other campaigns can learn from their experience. Read, listen + subscribe here >>Senate Democrats’ digital head start
In 2022, Democratic campaigns for U.S. Senate far outspent their Republican opponents online by a whopping 5 to 1 margin. They also outraised them in almost every battleground race. With next year’s elections poised to give Senate Democrats one of their most difficult maps in years, major Democratic campaigns are getting a head start on digital advertising to build their campaigns’ warchests.