The majority of Texans are with me. They support the freedom to control your own body and the right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

Even Democrat economists warned that the Biden spending plans would lead to runaway inflation. But Biden just kept spending.

Every morning, when I walk my kids to the bus for school, I worry about whether they will come home safe.

Hey, tomorrow's election day. So get out and vote. I know I will appreciate it and so will the rest of the candidates.

Political spending is higher than ever. Campaigns are on track to spend almost $10 billion this year on advertising.

That's according to ad impact, a company that tracks political ad spending. Candidates up and down the ballot are vying for your vote. But did you know that the ads you see might be totally different than what your neighbor sees?

Political candidates and their ad agencies are targeting you on streaming and social media platforms based on what podcasts you listen to, where you buy your clothes, or even what restaurants you visit.

What rules are there in a world where every digital step we take is tracked? How much we care? I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast where we get to the heart of the story.

This show is part of 1A's Remaking America project. Throughout the series, we look at how democracy is and is not working for everyone. We'll be back in just a moment.

Let's get into the conversation. Joining us in studio today is Lockland Marke. He covers political spending for Axios. Lockland, thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me. Also with us is Sheila Crumholz. She's the executive director of Open Secrets. That's an organization that tracks how money influences politics and policy. Sheila, welcome.

Hello, thank you. How much has political spending increased in recent years? It's been crazy to see the extreme jumps in spending last cycle in the 2020 presidential cycle.

We saw a jump from about $7 billion to $14.4 billion, so double the prior presidential cycle. We're not seeing as big a jump this cycle, but we are seeing increases in record numbers.

Lockland, what's driving this increase in spending? I think a lot of it is both parties seeking out their core base voters, trying not just to turn them out at the polls, but really energizing them from a fundraising perspective.

In 2020, you saw a Democratic candidate, a Senate candidate, putting up massive record-breaking numbers for congressional campaigns. That was driven largely by their ability to really fire up core supporters and get them donating in relatively small increments, $10, $25,50, but you're talking millions and millions of people over the course of two years.

It adds up very quickly, and both parties have really been trying to hone that grassroots fundraising mechanism. As much as there still is, the high dollar post-citizens united, super PAC landscape where tons of money flows through, I think the engine of high dollar political spending going forward is going to be each party's ability to harness that grassroots energy from a financial perspective.

So what I hear is that as one side spins, the other side feels like it has to spend more as well. Yeah, it's sort of an arms race, and increasingly these fundraising appeals that are used to try to juice that grassroots fundraising, get more and more frantic and over the top, and have things like promises of donation matching that will never never actually occur, but are used to try to lure people in and get them to part with, again, those small increments that multiply to a million plus times over really at a.

Sheila, when we think about ads spending, I think a lot of folks would expect, you know, for Senate race or presidential election for there to be tons of ads spending, but how far down the ballot is money being spent?

Oh, it's going all the way down, and in this case, I think what's most interesting in the cycle to see the tens of millions of dollars that are going into secretaries of state races, these used to be the sleepy backwater of elections.

Election administration roles were not so controversial before, but now are drawing big money as our ballot initiatives, and that is especially interesting because we're seeing, of course, unlimited donations in many states and even foreign money being allowed to spend so to be spent.

Yeah, it's as if all of the races have become nationalized, and a lot of the big players at the national level are looking down ballot to essentially build a farm team and kind of set the stage for what's to come.

Well, I want to get a little bit more into who's funding these ads, but we heard Sheila reference citizens united. Lockland just remind us what that decision did.

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