In July 2021, AdImpact projected that the 2022 political cycle would see $8.9B in political ad spending. This represented a historic sum for a midterm year. One that would have nearly matched 2020 – the highest spending political advertising cycle of all time – in a midterm year. A year later we have revised our projections upwards, to $9.7B. Through the end of July 2022, this election cycle is outpacing 2020 by nearly $700 million dollars.
While there is no Presidential race at the top of the ticket drawing headlines, every other race type (House, Senate, Governor, Downballot and Issue spending) has experienced dramatic growth from 2020. Fundraising has continued to break records as control of both chambers of Congress hangs in the balance, and state and local races continue to increase in prominence. A mark of the historic electoral spending is the year-to-year growth we have seen. From August 1st of 2018 to August 1st of 2022, we have already seen an increase of 203% in spending, pointing towards the increase in overall political media advertising for this election cycle.
Background on the 2022 Midterm Election Cycle
Although 2022 is not a Presidential year, there are still many high-profile and competitive races fueling the historic levels of political ad spending that will carry through to November. There are 38 Gubernatorial races slated for the 2021-2022 political cycle, two of which took place in 2021, and 36 that will occur this November. This is a significant increase over the 14 that took place in the 2019-2020 election cycle. There will be 35 Senate elections held in 2022 versus the 33 that took place in 2020. For the House, redistricting in some states shifted the competitive balance of many seats. In 2020 we saw historic amounts of political ad spending in House races and expect that precedent to be the new norm. Lastly, we have seen Downballot, non-federal races contribute in higher proportion to overall spending than they have in past cycles. So far, we have recorded $1.85B in Downballot spending and expect much more spending between now and the general election. Downballot and Issue spending this year is already pacing ahead of political advertising spending from 2020, which reached $1.95B by the end of the cycle. One California ballot issue, California Prop 27, Mobile Sports Betting and Revenue for Homelessness, has already seen $113M placed for this election cycle.
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