Radio Reaches Midterm Voters TV Misses.

Advice to candidates placing ads on TV in the final weeks leading up to November’s midterm election: adding AM/FM radio to the mix could make a difference between winning and losing.

New findings from MRI-Simmons and YouGov studies conducted by Audacy suggest that AM/FM radio’s massive reach of commuters, a significant voter segment, can extend linear and connected TV’s reach, adding significant incremental voters who are more motivated to do so.

“Commuters are really concerned about inflation and the cost of living right now,” Audacy VP of Government and Political Partnerships Haley Tear-Lombardo tells Campaigns and Elections owner and co-publisher Shane Grier in an interview. “You can reach that concerned voter in the car when they’re listening to audio.”

Tear-Lombardo, along with Audacy Senior VP, Research and Insights Ray Borelli, cite research from Audacy’s “The Commuter Election” post, showing 78% of employed Americans commute at least two days a week, and nearly 90% travel by car, where AM/FM radio reaches 82% of ad-supported audio listening during weekday commuting hours.

How important is the economy to commuters? Audacy’s survey found that among commuting homeowners with children, 73% say the economy and cost of living are the most important issues shaping their vote, vs. 59% of likely voters overall. Additionally, when responding to the open-ended question, “If you could give a candidate one piece of advice to earn your vote this fall, what would it be?” audio listeners were more than twice as likely to mention something related to the cost of living in their response vs. the average voter.

“When you isolate the people who are commuting to work, they’re feeling the pressure so much more and it shows up in the data,” Borelli says. “They’re more motivated to vote.”

How can radio help campaigns reach voters beyond traditional TV and digital buys, and why will it matter in the midterms? “People are reached differently on AM/FM radio, it’s unduplicated reach you’re not getting in the video space,” Tear-Lombardo says. “People that aren’t watching TV is an added element to any campaign.”

Borelli adds, “If you’re watching television [or] a streaming service, [a political ad] interrupts your entertainment viewing experience. It’s very disruptive. Whereas if you’re in the car and the economy is on your mind, and a candidate is giving an economy message, you know you’re going to be much more receptive to that.”

Political ad repetition on TV is also an issue, Borelli says. “There’s danger in overinvesting in CTV. You’re going to run into a frequency problem. You’re going to keep reaching the same voters over and over again. A Digital Remedy study found that one in three voters said overexposure to political advertising makes them annoyed with the campaign, so you can end up turning off the exact voters who you’re trying to attract.”

How impactful is radio advertising to political campaigns? Borelli cites 2022’s midterms, where radio added 676,000 incremental voters (+10%) to John Fetterman’s TV/CTV reach in Pennsylvania and 659,000 (+18%) to Raphael Warnock’s in Georgia. “We have so many case studies from 2022 where incremental dollars placed on radio actually had an impact in driving audiences not reached in other places – not on television, not on social media,” he says. “In Nevada, the Republican candidate for governor invested only 4% of his dollars in radio, but it brought him an incremental reach of [nearly] 100,000 voters, and he ended up winning the race by 14,000.”

Tear-Lombardo adds, “We’re not saying add money to add radio, [but] shift some dollars, anywhere from 5-20%, and you will see a significant difference in your reach – and you won’t see your TV or connected TV buys diminished in any way by making that shift.”