BILLINGS — As Election Day nears, experts say political advertisements are flooding social media feeds and competing for voters’ attention.
Montana State University Billings political science professor Paul Pope says many of those ads are funded through political action committees (PACs), organizations independent from campaigns that pool money from individuals, corporations, unions and other groups and spend it on political ads and mailers.
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Pope told MTN he sees more of these ads as election day draws closer.
“They think they're losing or they're behind in the polls,” he said. “They get desperate and so they start saying really nasty things out there.”
Pope cautioned many of these ads contain misleading information and voters should fact check what they see.
“You can tell by the extreme, very emotionally charged language,” he said. “They count on you being ignorant and not doing any research because it's a little more difficult to find the truth sometimes.”
Voters need to fact check AI too, according to CyberMontana security awareness program manager Laura Haacke.
“AI does give us misinformation only because people give AI misinformation,” said Haacke. “Look for independent confirmation. Big news stories will have more than one outlet sending that information out.”
“I would love to see people taking responsibility for this. It is so important. It's the only way we are going to cut down on this fake news and scams out there,” she added.
This midterm election could set a record. OpenSecrets has projected spending during the 2026 midterm election cycle will reach $11.9 billion, making it the most expensive midterm cycle to date.
“This is going to be one for the record books in terms of spending,” said Pope. “We're going to see a huge voter turnout.”
