The residents of Maine have grown accustomed to certain things: lobster, fog, and the quiet satisfaction of living in a state most Americans cannot locate on a map. What they may not have expected was to become, per capita, the most expensively advertised-to voters in the nation.
According to data from AdImpact and state voter rolls, political campaigns spent $331 for every registered voter in Maine during the 2026 election cycle, followed by Alaska at $313 and Iowa at $252. The figures fell just shy of a record set by Montana in 2024, when a competitive Senate seat pushed spending to $335 per voter. (One imagines the Montana record-holders are taking this development personally.)
Total political spending reached $11.9 billion across television, digital, and audio platforms, exceeding the $11.2 billion spent during the 2024 presidential year — a comparison that might give pause to those who assumed midterm elections were the quieter sibling. The figures do not include direct mail or outdoor advertising, which remain substantial.
The spending produced results that will be studied, and argued about, for some time. Republicans outspent Democrats by a margin of $5.5 billion to $5 billion nationally, according to AdImpact, yet lost key races in four of the five states with triple-digit spending per voter. Of 87 candidates backed by Elon Musk's America PAC, 80 lost, according to Travis Trawick, chief executive of the nonpartisan election technology firm FullPAC.
Mr. Trawick attributed the failures in part to timing. "Running the same ad in front of people 60 times just has diminishing returns," he said, noting that much of the spending came in the final five weeks, "when, at least in this election, most people's minds were already made up."
The deluge of advertising spilled beyond its intended borders. By October, Senate campaign advertisements from Iowa, Texas, Florida, Maine, and Kansas were appearing on national broadcasts of N.C.A.A. and N.F.L. football games — a development that may have puzzled viewers in, say, Oregon who had no strong feelings about the Kansas gubernatorial race.
One executive, who was not fully identified in the original reporting, described the mistargeting on streaming platforms as "egregious," noting that his child could recite verbatim advertisements dealing with abortion, drug use, and domestic violence.
For 2028, Mr. Trawick predicted a shift toward earlier spending and artificial-intelligence-driven strategies that create, as he put it, "a conversation between a voter and a candidate or an issue, not just talking at them."
Whether voters will welcome such conversations remains to be seen. The lobsters, at least, have no comment.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Political Campaigns Spent a Near-Record $331 Per Voter, But Waste Forces Rethink"