Leading up to Tuesday’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the campaigns and groups supporting them have spent almost $56 million on television ads that have run in Georgia. More than $1 million of that was spent on the day of the debate alone.
Across the state, Democrats spent over $550,000 and Republicans spent over $460,000 on television ads. The focus on reaching Georgians over television airwaves continued after groups spent a record amount on ads in August, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact.
Georgia is one of a handful of truly competitive states in this year’s election. Polls here show Trump and Harris are locked in a tight race four years after President Joe Biden narrowly won the state.
In August, campaigns and the groups supporting them spent a total of $28.2 million to run about 47,000 ads, with roughly 60% supporting Trump. The surge in spending came just after Harris announced she was joining the race.
The campaigns may purchase more ads to run through September, but University of Georgia political scientist Jeffrey Glas predicts the next surge will come in mid-October.
“Campaigns don’t want to peak in August or September or October. They want to peak on Election Day,” he said. Glas said if Biden had dropped out of the race earlier, there probably would not have been such a large spike in August.
There were limited opportunities for commercials during the debate given the format. Statewide, 82 ads aired on cable and broadcast television during the 1 ½-hour program. In the Atlanta market, more than half the 18 ads supported Harris, while in the Albany market, 10 of the 14 ads backed Trump.
Most of the spending funded TV advertisements, which ran on broadcast and cable networks. Additional spending paid for digital advertisements. On debate day, Democrats spent about $280,000 on digital ads in the state while Republicans laid out roughly $290,000. So far this year, over $43 million has been spent publishing ads for the campaigns online.
On debate day, the majority of ads across all markets in Georgia supported Harris. Savannah and Columbus aired the highest percentage of ads that backed Harris at roughly 64%. Augusta and Macon were tops in support of Trump, at about 44%.
For digital ads published on debate day, there was almost an even split between ads supporting Harris and ads favoring Trump, with Harris publishing just over 100 more ads. In Atlanta, there were 84 more ads published in support of Trump online.
Digital storytelling editor Charles Minshew contributed to this article.
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