Harris Outpaces Trump in Wisconsin Ad Spending, Despite Losing Nationally

Vice President Kamala Harris may be facing off against former President Donald Trump in their first presidential debate on Tuesday night, but the two candidates have already been jockeying for America’s attention for weeks now, and it appears that Harris is in the lead — at least in Wisconsin.

A new report from AdImpacts Politics shows the Trump campaign outpaced the Harris campaign in TV ad spending in Wisconsin this August, though her national spending on TV ads outpaced the Trump's by almost $22 million.

Vice President Kamala Harris was outspent by former President Donald Trump by a little less than $1 million dollars. This comes after Harris posted historic fundraising totals in the wake of President Joe Biden dropping out of the race. Her campaign reported Harris raised more than $100 million within the first 36 hours of Biden's announcement.

Compared to totals from 2020, then-candidate Biden outpaced Trump in TV ad spending in Wisconsin by close to $4 million. Biden also outspent Trump nationally in 2020, but by a wider margin than Harris in 2024 — beating Trump's spending by $53 million.

Harris's Ad Campaign Outperforms Trump's in Reach

Despite entering the presidential race more than seven months into the year, just over 100 days before Election Day, Harris has seen her TV ad campaign skyrocket, outpacing Trump by a significant amount, according to data from Samba TV.

Since beginning her ad campaign in July, Harris ads have reached 44.4M U.S. households at an average frequency of 15.7, Samba says. That’s 41% higher than the 31.4M U.S. households that Trump’s ads have graced with a frequency of 13.9 during that time.

(Frequency indicates the number of times that a user or household will interact with an ad over a specific period of time and, in this case, Samba is measuring the entire stretch of time since Harris launched her campaign in July. So, on average, each of those 44.4M households have interacted with a Harris ad 15.7 times in that time frame.)

Throughout the entire year, Trump ads have reached 34.8M U.S. households, Samba says, meaning that Harris has still surpassed her opponent by 28% in ad reach despite the fact that she didn’t launch a TV ad campaign until about seven weeks ago.

Interestingly, Samba also points out that 90% of Trump’s ad reach has occurred in the weeks since Harris joined the race.

Ad Reach Among Minority Groups Lags

However, neither candidate is doing particularly well with minority groups, as both are overindexing among white audiences and underindexing among Hispanic and Asian households.

According to Samba, Harris is underindexing in Hispanic households by 23%, Trump by 32%.

Swing State Focus for Both Candidates

Naturally, both candidates have turned their attention to the swing states — which Samba considers to be AZ, GA, MI, NC, NV, PA, WI — with Harris’ ads reaching 65% of households in those seven states and Trump ads reaching 62%.

Harris’ lowest ad reach among the swing states is North Carolina and Georgia, where her ads have permeated 57% and 61% of households, respectively. Trump is also struggling a tad in the same states, reaching 59% of households in Georgia and 62% in North Carolina.

By comparison, Harris ads reached an average of 32% of households across the other 43 states, and Trump ads reached 19% of households.

Looking Ahead: Debate Night

Samba TV doesn’t measure mobile, however, their sample includes a panel of 3M terrestrial TVs, weighted to the U.S. Census. By contrast, Samba TV’s panel is nearly 100x larger than Nielsen’s household footprint of 45K homes.

The entire nation will get the opportunity to see both candidates take a position in Tuesday night’s debate on ABC. Despite the ongoing carriage dispute between Disney and DirecTV that makes ABC unavailable to the latter’s customers, the event is being simulcast on CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, the BBC, and C-Span. The debate will also be live streamed on Hulu.