Florida voters have not heard Donald Trump or Kamala Harris "approve of this message" much during the 2024 election.
Neither have they been targeted much by their zip codes by social media advertising from the presidential campaigns.
If one needed any more evidence that Florida has lost its swing state status for presidential politics, look no further than the collapse of presidential candidate ad spending in the Sunshine State.
Florida used to see a gold rush of spending by candidates and special interest groups during presidential election years. But not this year. Not on TV. And not online.
Digital targeted ad spending can be counted in the thousands of dollars. Total candidate campaign spending is a mere whisper of what it was during the two previous presidential election years.
Four years ago, $177 million was spent by presidential campaigns on advertising in Florida. This year, that spending has all but disappeared — dropping by more than 99% — according to advertising tracking company Ad-Impact.
Instead, the ad spending this election cycle in Florida is focused on issues.
Almost $103 million has been spent on ads for and against proposed constitutional amendments. About half of the spending has been focused on Amendment 3, which would legalize recreational marijuana for anyone 21 and over. A third of the spending has gone toward Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.
Party Leaders
"It's not all about TV. It's about boots on the ground," Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison told WLRN from Jacksonville while he was on a get-out-the-vote tour as early voting began.
"It's about having folks to be able to knock on the doors, to make the phone calls, to send the text messages. That's really, really important. What we have seen here is one of the largest operations that we’ve had here in Florida for a long, long time," he said.
The DNC made a five-figure advertising buy the first week of early voting. The print, digital and social media ads target Haitian-American voters. The tactic is in response to attacks on Haitian immigrants by both former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential running mate JD Vance.
The Florida Democratic Party received $400,000 from the national committee in late September. The money is being spent on voter organizational efforts.
Democrats lost the advantage they had in 2020 over Republicans with the number of registered voters. There are over 1 million more registered Republicans than Democrats for this general election.
And those GOP voters are showing up more frequently to cast ballots. During the first week of early voting, about twice as many registered Republicans voted than registered Democrats in Florida. And that's without much ad spending by the GOP presidential ticket.
"TV — I think it's going to come down over time. Not everyone watches TV, " said Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power.
Digital dollars
He’s right about traditional TV. A year ago, 53% of TV viewing was over-the-air and cable television, according to national data from Nielsen. In September, that had fallen to less than half, while streaming audiences have grown.
"You obviously have the digital and all the things that go into that," said Power. "But we're targeting people in their mailboxes. We're targeting them with people who are walking to their door who have built relationships with them."
READ MORE: A former chief justice of Florida talks Amendment 4, and ongoing lawsuits
Instead of advertising the candidates or their positions, much of the digital advertising by the presidential campaigns has been geared toward fundraising, issues and events.
"The Democrats have very much ceded [ Florida ] to the Trump campaign," said Andrew Arenge with the University of of Pennsylvania's Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, where he runs a dashboard tracking targeted ads by the campaigns that primarily appear on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Arenge found the Democratic presidential campaign hasn’t spent any money on digital ads targeting voters by zip codes in Florida since April when Joe Biden topped the ticket. Even then, it was only about $70,000 worth of ads directed toward voters in South Florida, Tampa and Jacksonville about abortion rights.
He said that tells him the now-Harris campaign "maybe flirted with the idea that Florida was going to be competitive quickly, but saw, no," and decided not to invest in advertising.
The Trump campaign has spent even less with Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram going after Florida voters in cyberspace. According to Arenge's data, the former president's campaign spent just a few thousand dollars in South Florida in July.
"Trump hosted a rally in Doral on July 9. So he was specifically advertising that event to get people to attend," Arenge said.
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