Ads Focusing on Corruption Surge in Midterms

Corruption has become a central topic of the midterm elections, reflecting voters’ heightened attention to the amount of money flooding into politics and campaigns.

A Brennan Center study from May found that 92 percent of voters, across party lines, believe corruption is a big problem in politics and government, and a majority connect it to kitchen table issues affecting them, such as affordability and public services. Now, television ads from both parties have embraced messaging about ethics and money in politics, with discussion of government ethics in particular becoming more frequent than in any of the last eight elections, dating back to 2012 (the first cycle for which data is available).

Analysis of the content of political ads by the Wesleyan Media Project shows dramatic spikes in the proportion of ads in this midterm cycle discussing both government ethics and campaign finance. The analysis looked at television ads aimed at the general election, sorting them into topics and comparing those categories across elections.

Government ethics is a core corruption issue, with recent polling finding that 66 percent of Americans believe President Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and even larger majorities expressing dismay over members of Congress trading stocks with the benefit of nonpublic information.

Mentions of government ethics in television ads this cycle shot up to the highest levels of the past 14 years. Nearly 24 percent of House ads and 16 percent of Senate ads mentioned government ethics, several times more than the single-digit percentages of 2024.

As the Brennan Center’s polling shows, many voters see the erosion of campaign finance rules as a critical driver of corruption. The percentage of Senate ads mentioning campaign finance is almost three times as high as in the 2022 midterms, and the percentage of House ads mentioning campaign finance is higher than at any time since 2012.

Overall, 31 percent of ads in this midterm election have mentioned either ethics or campaign finance, a record high since 2012.

The increase in mentions of campaign finance and ethics is especially pronounced on the Democratic side, with pro-Democratic ads mentioning these issues at rates far exceeding any of the previous election cycles for which we have data. In both House and Senate races, at least 4 in 10 pro-Democratic ads have mentioned at least one of these issues.

This year’s pattern represents a break from recent elections, in which the parties pushed government ethics messages at broadly similar rates, and Republicans often had a higher percentage of ethics mentions. But in this election, pro-Democratic ads leaned much harder on ethics messages, with a 9-point gap between the parties in House ads and a nearly 25-point gap in Senate ads. Democrats have discussed campaign finance more than Republicans throughout the sample, but the gap is especially pronounced this midterm, with a nearly 22-point gap on the Senate side.

Mentions of either ethics or campaign finance in pro-Republican ads have also increased, especially in House elections. House GOP ads are significantly more likely to discuss these issues than their Senate counterparts. House pro-GOP ads have hit a high since 2012 of mentioning either ethics or campaign finance 27 percent of the time this year.

Whether the new Congress follows through on addressing the anticorruption agenda emphasized in this election’s political advertising remains an open question.

Authors

Penny Mack and Ian Vandewalker

Brennan Center for Justice

Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael Franz, Travis Ridout, Breeze Floyd, and Donny Snyder
Wesleyan Media Project