The close margins that decided many targeted races this cycle mean that practitioners on the losing side will have to answer some tough questions. One of those queries, inevitably, will be was their budget spent effectively?
A California-based Democratic practitioner believes she has the answer — at least for some races on her side of the aisle. Cheryl Hori of Pacific Campaign House said new investment by clients in targeting typically neglected constituencies did pay off in 2024.
“There definitely was a heavier investment in AAPI, Black, Latino, and LGBTQ-plus communities this cycle over past cycles, which was fantastic,” she said. “In the congressional districts and in the communities that we saw this increased level of engagement, Democrats did see bigger wins.”
Hori pointed to the House races in California 27, 45 and 47, as well as Nevada 3 and New York 3 as close contests that Democrats ran the table on. “I think that Democrats saw good returns for their money,” Hori said.
One question that lingers for her, though, is whether money got to campaigns in time to be spent effectively.
“Starting earlier would have done great service for so many campaigns, organizations and committees,” she said. “And because so many of them did not start early, we saw a lot of political spending in places that we might not think to be the most responsible or the most impactful.”
She pointed to campaign ads ending up on a Roku channel called Woof World, meaning that, well, dogs wound up the target audience for some political ad dollars in Washington state.
“That was a result of campaigns not starting earlier,” she said. “The quality of inventory was significantly diminished by the time campaigns were ready to go up, which is how I think a number of campaigns ended up trafficking ads on CTV channels that are for dogs.”
She added: “One of the things that I might recommend to organizations, stakeholders, decision makers in the future is to demand a little bit more accountability from your practitioners and your vendors.
“Because the worst thing that your vendor can do is get you bad press because we’ve put up an ad on a channel that has zero relevance to your audience.”
