What do hockey fans, “Real Housewives of Atlanta” viewers and Cracker Barrel diners have in common?

This fall, they are all targets of Senate campaigns advertising on Facebook and Instagram. But the two parties are chasing very different audiences, for very different reasons.

Republican campaigns from Alaska to Maine are largely working off the same list of broadly popular interests, from NFL fans to Ford truck drivers to Joe Rogan listeners, and using those ads mainly to persuade voters. Democrats are going hyperlocal, tailoring their targets state by state and using the ads mostly to raise money, according to an MS NOW review of Meta ad data from nine of the most competitive Senate races.

Meta’s Ad Library publishes “detailed targeting” lists for many political campaigns, showing which communities on its platforms they have chosen to reach. Some campaigns keep those lists private, but roughly half of the candidates in this year’s closest Senate races have made theirs public.

Other staples of GOP targeting lists include NASCAR and NHL fans, hunters, fishermen, and viewers of “Shark Tank” and Food Network. In some cases, the lists are nearly interchangeable: Reps. Ashley Hinson in Iowa and Michele Tafoya in Minnesota as well as Sen. Susan Collins in Maine all use almost identical ones.

Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Dan Sullivan of Alaska are making small substitutions, such as “deer hunting” instead of “duck hunting” or “parenting” instead of “homeschooling,” but they otherwise are casting the same broad net regardless of geography.

The Sullivan, Marshall, Hinson, Collins and Tafoya campaigns did not respond to requests for comment on how their targeting lists were chosen.

Democrats are taking a different approach. Their lists tend to be highly localized and tailored to each candidate’s state, though several share an affinity with museumgoers and NPR listeners.

Michigan candidate Abdul El-Sayed, for example, is targeting those interested in Middle Eastern cuisine and Palestine, likely owing to the state’s significant Muslim minority. Annie Andrews, who is running a surprisingly close race in the Republican stronghold of South Carolina, is after fans of the southern “Real Housewives” franchises, including Atlanta and Miami.

In Maine, Troy Jackson is advertising to users interested in composting and sustainability; Mainers rank second in compost per capita, according to Environmental Protection Agency data. New Hampshire Rep. Chris Pappas is setting his sights on Patagonia wearers and Ben & Jerry’s customers; both companies are popular in the Granite State, where hiking culture is widespread and ice cream consumption is high.

The split extends to what the ads are for. Three of the four Democratic Senate candidates with public targeting lists primarily are running fundraising ads, while all five Republican candidates with public lists are focusing their spending on persuasion ads designed to sway voters ahead of November’s election.

For Democrats, the logic is straightforward, said Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist with experience on statewide campaigns. Campaigns are increasingly turning to platforms like Facebook to drive fundraising, he said, and their targeting lists are essentially collections of interests and audiences they believe are most likely to produce donors.

“A lot of these firms are just going, ‘What gives me the widest possible net to find people that are going to give money to my candidate?’” Nellis said.

Republicans’ shift away from fundraising on Meta comes two years after several Republican strategists sounded the alarm about the lack of fundraising engagement on Meta platforms during the 2024 election, including Facebook. In a February 2024 interview with Campaigns & Elections magazine, longtime Republican strategist Mike Hahn called Facebook “dead” to Republican fundraising, adding that there were not “any donors on the platform anymore.”

Localized targeting is “incredibly effective,” Nellis said, but it’s also expensive. That may help explain why several Republican campaigns rely on identical lists rather than seeking out niche audiences in their own states.

“If you’re a Republican, you might be like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna target everybody that eats at Cracker Barrel,’” Nellis said. “I’m sure that there are some [campaigns] in here that have more thought to them, but it’s probably just throwing spaghetti against the wall.”

Nicole Akumatey contributed to this report.

The post Hunters, NPR listeners and ‘Real Housewives’ fans: Who Senate campaigns are really trying to reach appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.