Political Forecast Shows Podcasts Playing Growing Role In 2026 Election Ads Strategies.

Audio platforms are poised to tap into a record wave of political advertising in 2026, as campaigns prepare to spend more than $10 billion on media in what is shaping up to be the most expensive midterm election in history.

Kinetiq Political Insights projects $10.4 billion in total U.S. political media spending during the 2026 cycle, with a potential range of spending that could top out at $11.8 billion, according to a new report. The forecast says spending is driven by strong fundraising and an intense, highly concentrated battleground map.

Spending will be heavily concentrated in a handful of battleground states and major media markets, with Kinetiq pointing to Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada as the biggest magnets for political dollars — together accounting for roughly $3.3 billion, or about a third of total U.S. spending. Michigan alone is projected to top $1 billion, a massive jump from roughly $67 million in 2022, while Georgia could approach $900 million.

At the market level, Atlanta is expected to see the biggest total at about $591 million, followed by Detroit ($432 million) in Phoenix ($381 million) and Las Vegas ($310 million).

For audio, a rising tide is already beginning to translate into more consistent inclusion in campaign media plans, according to the outlook, a joint effort of the political ad agency National Media and the media intelligence firm Kinetiq.

“Digital audio has become more of a mainstay on the buys,” says Megan Burns, Senior Media Planner/Buyer at National Media. “We are including it on most buys, and that was not the case before. Obviously, it’s a little early in the election cycle right now this year, but even in 2024 we were making a push to include audio, and our clients are absolutely wanting to be there.”

Burns says shifting digital strategies are helping open the door for audio to capture a larger share of campaign budgets, particularly as buyers move away from lower-performing formats.

“Display advertising has become less of a preferred tactic over the political cycle,” she explains. “It was used often in 2018 and now we're hardly ever doing display banners for candidates — it’s more video and audio. So audio has an opportunity to take from some of that digital money that’s not going to display ads.”

Podcasting is also gaining traction as campaigns look to reach specific audiences in more targeted ways, even as scale remains a challenge.

“We make sure that we are hitting the podcast listeners because of the qualitative aspects of who that audience is. And we can genre target as well,” Burns says. But because it can be difficult to buy individual podcasts, she said they typically go to podcast networks to get the scale required. “Many podcast vendors are putting together, packages where we can buy specific genres like news and sports, or even political categories” Burns said.

Download a copy of the forecast HERE.