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TEXAS — If it has felt like political ads this year have been a lot, you’re not imagining it.
“All day, all night,” said Camille Brown, a voter. “To the point of annoyance.”
No matter who you vote for, there’s no escaping the political ads.
“Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. I think sometimes they can kind of bring it back, scale it back a little bit. But at the same time, I’m sure it’s helping other people get to the polls or make their decision,” said Krystal King, another voter.
Texans frequently saw one particular type of ad: text messages.
“As far as texts go, we’re certainly seeing more than we traditionally have,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.
Texts are some of the cheapest ads to produce, and this year, campaigns have money to spend.
“This is the most expensive Senate race in American history,” said Jillson.
According to the ad tracking site AdImpact, so far, ad spending for the Texas Senate race totals more than 573 million dollars. That makes it the most expensive non-presidential race ever.
“You’re going to use the resources that you have to assure that you get the outcome that you want, and so when you’ve got lots of money, you can spread it across lots of communication and technology options,” said Jillson.
Voters that Spectrum News spoke with in Dallas-Fort Worth have noticed.
“A lot of text messages. Even today, I got a text that said like, ‘Hey, you’ve normally voted by now, and you haven’t voted yet,’” said King.
“Even though it is a bit of an annoyance to get all of those notifications, someone out there must be responding to it,” said Brown.
Under federal laws, campaigns do have some ad rules, but Spectrum News learned campaign calls and texts are exempt from National Do Not Call Registry requirements.
You can block each messager individually, but it’s a hefty task, especially since Americans received about 15 million political texts during the last non-presidential midterm elections in 2022, according to the spam blocking company RoboKiller.
“That’s whack-a-mole because if you’re getting a whole series of texts, as many people are, it takes time to do that [blocking],” said Jillson. “Certainly, that would increase your aggravation.”
The best option might just be to wait it out until the midterm elections are over.

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