Here’s how Trump, Harris and their allies have altered their ad spending strategies in October

In the first two weeks of October, Donald Trump and his allies directed about a third of all their spending on broadcast TV advertisements to ads about transgender health care, a significant increase reflecting a major tactical shift from previous months’ ad expenditures.

In the first two weeks of October, Donald Trump and his allies directed about a third of all their spending on broadcast TV advertisements to ads about transgender health care, a significant increase reflecting a major tactical shift from previous months’ ad expenditures. On the other side, Kamala Harris and her allies continued to put money into ads focused on taxes, character and health care, while lowering their investment in spots about abortion rights. Democrats have also abandoned an earlier emphasis on immigration and crime when Harris and her allies sought to blunt sustained GOP attacks in the weeks after she took over the ticket. The ad tracking firm AdImpact catalogs the issues that are referenced in broadcast TV campaign ads and tracks the amount of money behind those spots. Comparing changes since August illustrates how the two campaigns and their allies are tailoring their messages and how much they’re spending to do so. Since the beginning of October, Republican advertisers in the presidential race have flooded the airwaves in battleground states with a series of stark attack ads, blasting Harris for previously expressing support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners, a position she took during her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign. These ads about transgender health care – whichAdImpact tracks under the “LGBTQ rights” category –  accounted for about 33% of all Republican broadcast TV advertising during the first two weeks of October, more than $21 million out of a total of about $66 million. The emphasis on transgender policies is a pronounced shift from Republican advertising earlier in the fall. In August, LGBTQ rights were unmentioned in GOP broadcast TV ads; in September, they accounted for just 7.5%, or about $7 million in total broadcast spending.