Senate Democrats’ early digital edge
In all eight battleground U.S. Senate races, Democrats have started the cycle by outspending and outmaneuvering their GOP opponents online
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Democrats’ chances of retaining their slim majority in the U.S. Senate this fall are not great, given the demographics and pro-Trump lean of several must-win states (Montana, Ohio) and the retirement of West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. In fact, Republicans are uniquely positioned to lock Democrats out of a Senate majority for a generation - if they can play their cards right.
However, it appears they are in fact… not playing their cards right.
In this week’s FWIW, I’ll illustrate an emerging online spending discrepancy between Republican and Democratic Senate campaigns and share a few data points on why 2024 is starting to look a lot like the 2022 midterms. But first…
By the numbers
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $10.3 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
An unprecedented proxy war is being waged in California, where Senate hopeful Adam Schiff is spending money on Facebook to boost a Republican rival, while Katie Porter is spending to boost a different Republican Senate candidate.
Schiff’s team started the bizarre situation when his PAC began mentioning GOP candidate Steve Garvey in advertising, hoping that doing so would help Garvey build Republican support, raise his name ID, and finish second in the state’s jungle primary (knocking fellow Democrat Katie Porter out of the race). Porter initially criticized Schiff’s move as cynical but is now running ads promoting a different Republican, Eric Early, to split the GOP vote. Making this more awkward: neither Garvey nor Early are running many digital ads themselves.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $4.7 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
Nikki Haley’s Super PAC, SFA Inc., is spending heavily on Google and YouTube ads ahead of South Carolina’s presidential primary election tomorrow. Haley caused a slight media circus this week when she announced she’d be making a major speech, leading many political watchers to think she was dropping out. Instead, she doubled down on her campaign, vowing to stay in the race no matter what.
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $195,300 on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
…and lastly, here are the top spending political advertisers on X (formerly Twitter) in 2024:
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Your 2024 digital dispatch
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden campaigns year-to-date:
While the Biden campaign continues to outspend Trump online by a ratio of nearly ten to one, Trump’s campaign is spending its limited resources running these ads attacking Nikki Haley on Facebook:
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign could be in financial trouble: according to recent FEC filings, it spent more money than it raised in January.
From around the internet:
I spoke with longtime tech journalist Issie Lapowsky for this Fast Company article about how Meta gave up on politics ahead of 2024.
The New York Times published this excellent deep dive into the rise of news accounts on Instagram. It’s something I have been thinking about a lot lately, and believe could have a major impact on this fall's elections, especially among left leaning audiences.
For the 12th straight month, YouTube was the top streaming service in the U.S., outpacing Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu, Max, and all the rest.
Around half of adult TikTok users in the U.S. have never posted a video themselves, according to a new Pew report.
Harry’s huge haul
Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police Officer on January 6th who is now a candidate for Congress in Maryland’s 3rd Congressional district, raised some eyebrows this week with the release of some absolutely bonkers grassroots fundraising numbers. Rob Pyers pointed out on Twitter that Dunn raised a whopping $2.75 million on ActBlue in just three weeks in January - making him the highest grossing Democratic candidate nationwide after Joe Biden. His individual campaign haul even outpaced that of the DNC.
Harry’s huge haul is just another example of Twitter #Resistance personalities swimming in grassroots dollars. In addition to Dunn’s groundswell of grassroots support, congressional candidate Eugene Vindman (the brother of Trump antagonist Alexander Vindman) and Rep. Adam Schiff have raised boatloads of cash this cycle.
Senate Democrats’ early digital edge
If you’ve been a reader of FWIW since the 2022 midterms, you’d know that I wrote extensively back then about Republicans’ “old school” campaign. During that election cycle, leading Republican candidates for U.S. Senate and Governor in battleground races dramatically underinvested in online outreach, instead relying on TV ads from outside groups to reach voters.
Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous Republican consultants who bemoaned their party’s lack of investment in digital advertising and outreach. Despite those concerns, it appears that Republicans running in 2024 are on track to keep it old school. In every battleground U.S. Senate race, from Ohio to Arizona, Democrats are already outspending their Republican opponents online by a wide margin. Here’s the state of play in eight key races:
The Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, the DSCC, has also outspent the NRSC (its Republican counterpart) significantly during this same time period.
At this early stage in the cycle, most ad dollars on online platforms go to building their lists for grassroots fundraising. That’s important so these campaigns can hire staff and go back to these donors for more cash throughout the cycle. However, many Democrats like Jon Tester, Sherrod Brown, and Elissa Slotkin are already spending on persuasion-style ads placing videos or news articles in voters’ feeds about their policy positions or legislative records. And Republicans… aren’t.
Democrats’ early digital edge extends beyond ad spending - in these 8 races, most of the Democrats have larger social followings and generally see more post engagement on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, out of the 21 candidates mentioned above, only Democrats are on TikTok: Sherrod Brown (OH), Ruben Gallego (AZ), and David Trone (MD) recently joined the platform, while Bob Casey (PA) and Hill Harper (MI) have been using the app for a while.
This year, Democrats are again on defense in key Senate races and are facing the very real possibility of being locked out of a Senate majority for at least a decade. Their campaigns seem to be prioritizing multi-channel outreach to make sure that doesn't happen, while their GOP rivals are floundering around waiting for some dark money cavalry to save them.
One more thing: Revolutionizing political comms
Our social feeds have been buzzing with content from Chi Ossé, a 25 year old NYC city councilman from Brooklyn, who seemingly understands how the internet works better than most politicians.
He regularly posts videos about issues or updates in his council district like trains closing for construction, the affordable housing crisis, and loss of library funding on Instagram and TikTok. While this is already an innovative and smart way to share updates with his constituents, his videos are also *very* well done and very Gen Z. It’s unsurprising then that he’s recently amassed 51,000 followers on Instagram (and is growing by ~5,000 every week), as well as 24,000 followers and over 530,00 likes on TikTok.
Ossé is proof that elected officials both can and should be taking advantage of social media to inform their constituents and connect with them on a more personal level. And his impressive online presence also makes the case that young people – who understand and are a part of today’s trends and culture – can be highly effective and responsive elected officials.
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