helping journalists cover social media in the presidential campaign
In anticipation of a contentious presidential election, Facebook announced in September 2020 that it would make two changes to its treatment of ads about “social issues, elections or politics” in the US. This post provides an overview of these changes.
With the election finally decided, it is clear that the 2020 election was far from predictable. Several key voting demographics defied polling and created an unexpected outcome. In this article, we take a look at the “Latinos for Trump” Facebook page and how ads were used to influence this key demographic of voters.
As the death toll in the U.S. climbs to over 230,000, let’s see how Biden and Trump are choosing to discuss COVID.
As Election Day ballots are being cast, both candidates are hoping their ad spending efforts in Georgia have paid off. In this post, we take a look at how the candidates are using different types of Facebook ads to appeal to Georgia voters.
In the final days of the election, the Biden and Trump campaigns have focused a large sum of their ad spending in Wisconsin. In this post, we analyze how each candidate is allocating their money in hopes of winning over last-minute voters in this critical battleground state.
The Biden campaign has started running ads from a staggering 26 additional pages over the last two weeks, including pages for established media outlets. The ads the Biden campaign has run from pages for some of these media outlets are worth more closely scrutinizing.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump have heavily focused spending in Pennsylvania, a critical battleground state in the November election.
Donald Trump and Joe Biden enter the final full week of the campaign with an increased focus on swing states and spending records.
Campaigns may have different strategies depending on if a state leans towards them or their opponent. In this post, Illuminating lead researcher Jeff Hemsley investigates if the Trump and Biden campaigns are using different Facebook ad strategies in six key contested states, including Iowa, Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.
If you’re a regular visitor to the dashboard, blog or reader of the newsletter, you may have noticed some issues with the site the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, we identified some issues with our collections. We have now corrected the issues, and removed incorrect blog posts that contained inaccuracies.