COLUMBUS, Ohio (WOWO) — Ohio voters are being bombarded with political advertising as the Nov. 3 election approaches, but political scientists and marketing experts tell WCMH the sheer volume of campaign messages does not necessarily mean voters are changing their minds.
Instead, the flood of television commercials, social media posts, streaming advertisements and political mailers may serve another purpose: keeping candidates and issues fresh in voters’ minds while campaigns compete for a relatively small number of undecided or persuadable voters.
The scale of that effort is substantial.
According to advertising-tracking firm AdImpact, the Ohio U.S. Senate race had attracted roughly $88 million in television advertising since Sept. 1 at the time of the original report. More recent national tracking showed Ohio’s Senate contest had become the nation’s biggest midterm advertising market, with spending reaching approximately $240 million by late September.
The contest between Republican Sen. Jon Husted and former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is among the closely watched Senate races that could affect control of Congress. Recent polling has shown a competitive race, with a Sept. 22-Oct. 1 New York Times/Siena College survey of 616 likely voters showing Brown at 49% and Husted at 46%. Other recent surveys have produced different margins, underscoring the competitiveness of the contest.
Ohio’s governor’s race is also attracting significant attention, with Republican Vivek Ramaswamy facing Democrat Amy Acton in a contest that has likewise produced close polling.
That competitive political environment helps explain why Ohio voters are seeing so many advertisements.
Ohio State University marketing and psychology professor Selin Malkoc said political advertising can become counterproductive when voters feel overwhelmed by the constant messaging.
“It can backfire in avoiding ads altogether, and it can even lead to not wanting to vote because people are just annoyed with the political system altogether,” Malkoc said. “They just don’t want to be seeing this much politics in their lives.”
At the same time, Malkoc said there is a reason campaigns continue buying advertisements despite voter frustration.
Most people do not pay close attention to every political commercial they see. Campaigns therefore rely in part on repetition, hoping that continued exposure will cause their message to remain familiar when voters ultimately make their decisions.
“Because our memory decays, nobody wants to resolve everything till the end,” Malkoc said. “They want to keep on giving it something steadily so that it will stay fresh in your memory.”
Ohio State assistant professor of communications and political science Dominik Stecula said political advertisements generally are not very effective at completely changing a voter’s political preference.
He said direct interaction with voters can be more effective, but reaching large numbers of people through door-to-door canvassing becomes much more difficult in statewide races.
That makes television, digital advertising and other mass-media strategies particularly attractive to campaigns.
“In a lot of places where there is no close election coming up, they’re not subject to this,” Stecula said. “Because we are in a state where a lot is on the line … we are unfortunately in the group of voters that are exposed to a lot of this.”
The amount of spending has accelerated as Election Day gets closer.
AdImpact data cited in the original report showed that $47.3 million was spent on Ohio Senate advertising and another $5.3 million on the governor’s race between Sept. 29 and Oct. 5.
The Ohio Senate contest had already set advertising records during the 2024 election cycle, and Malkoc said spending this year was projected to increase substantially over that previous record.
Nationally, Ohio has remained an especially expensive advertising battleground. A Washington Post analysis of AdImpact data found the Ohio Senate contest had nearly $200 million in advertising spending by Sept. 23 and about $240 million by Sept. 30.
The advertising surge is not limited to traditional television.
Political campaigns increasingly reach voters through social media, streaming services and other digital platforms, expanding the number of places where voters can encounter campaign messages.
That has also changed the timing of campaign advertising.
Labor Day was once viewed as the unofficial beginning of the general-election campaign season, but Ohio voters were seeing political advertising before September this year.
Malkoc said the expansion of early voting is one factor that could encourage campaigns to begin advertising sooner. Candidates and political organizations have an incentive to reach voters before those voters cast ballots, rather than waiting until the traditional Election Day period.
The downside for campaigns is that voters can become saturated.
Stecula and Malkoc both said repeated exposure can produce irritation, particularly when voters feel they are seeing the same candidates and arguments everywhere they turn.
Attack advertisements can make that problem more pronounced.
Stecula said positive advertisements are generally designed to build a candidate’s image, particularly among voters who have not made up their minds.
Negative advertisements can have another purpose: motivating a candidate’s existing supporters.
Stecula said “angry people are more likely to vote,” meaning an attack advertisement can be designed not only to persuade undecided voters but also to increase enthusiasm among people who already support a candidate.
Malkoc said she believes Ohio’s current advertising environment has leaned heavily toward negative messaging.
“The best ads have some negatives about the opponent, and some positives about why they should be choosing you,” Malkoc said. “However, we are not quite seeing that right now. We are seeing more negatives and very little positives, so I personally doubt the efficacy and the success.”
Political advertising also presents voters with another problem: determining what is accurate.
Campaign advertisements can contain disputed claims, selective presentations of facts or outright falsehoods, and voters do not necessarily have a simple way to determine the accuracy of every statement they encounter.
Federal law provides broad protections for political speech under the First Amendment. Television broadcasters also have limited ability to reject or alter advertisements from legally qualified candidates because of the federal rules governing political advertising.
Ohio previously had a law addressing knowingly false statements about political candidates, but a federal court struck that law down more than a decade ago on constitutional grounds.
The growth of artificial intelligence has created another challenge.
AI-generated political material is developing faster than many existing regulations, while online political advertisements are subject to a different regulatory framework than advertisements carried by traditional broadcast television.
That leaves voters increasingly responsible for evaluating what they see.
Malkoc said voters should conduct their own research rather than relying exclusively on campaign advertisements.
The recommendation comes as Ohio enters the final weeks before Election Day with both major statewide races attracting heavy spending and voters reporting growing frustration with the volume of political messaging.
For campaigns, however, the advertising blitz reflects the importance of Ohio in the 2026 election.
For voters, it means the political commercials are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
And while experts say repeated advertising can keep candidates and issues in a voter’s memory, the same repetition can also create fatigue, annoyance and disengagement — leaving campaigns to balance the benefits of staying visible against the possibility that voters simply stop paying attention.
