Q: What is your projected total for all 2020 spending?

A: We’re projecting a total of $6 billion in political spending during the 2019-2020 cycle.

Q: Digital spending has become the major story in elections. Do these projections account for that?

A: Yes. We’ve teamed up with CrossScreen Media to project $1.6 billion in digital spending, primarily on Facebook and Google. The remaining $4.4 billion of our projected total will be spent on traditional media (local broadcast, cable, and radio).

Q: These numbers are different from some of the other projected totals in the news. Why?

A: Our projections are based on the correlation between spending in a race and competitiveness of a seat. We have analyzed every seat that’s up for election in 2020, combining previous spending levels with Cook Political Report’s race ratings. Our historical data comes from our comprehensive database of political ad spending that dates to 2014.

Q: How detailed are these projections?

A: We’ve projected spending for every race: Presidential, House, Senate, and Gubernatorial. We also have projections broken out to the station level for broadcast spending and the market level for cable spending.

Q: That’s a lot of valuable information. How do you know it’s accurate?

A: We’re confident in the data on which these projections are based, but we’re very aware that they could change. We’ve accounted for various factors like the price of a media market, but there are unforeseeable circumstances that could influence the total. We’ll be monitoring the political landscape closely and adjust our numbers if needed based on the latest activity.

Access our 2020 Projections report here.