I knew American politics were wild, but holy hell man, some of these videos are just exploitative - e.g., https://youtu.be/mbNiWWKqt0s
I'm not sure what this person's agenda is, and why they're appearing for an advert in Ohio when their transition that they regret happened in GODDAMNED TEXAS and didn't transition AS A CHILD.
It absolutely reeks of despair when the SLF PAC is paying for videos that are basically "Democrats are putting chemicals in the water that makes the frogs gay".
Part of the reason for the insane ads is that they’re often (not always) created and paid for by groups who don’t have a name to tarnish. They’re like running into that crazy neighbor who suddenly starts talking politics…. and you’re kinda scared.
Summary if you don't want to click: Vivek Ramaswamy ran an ad against his opponent, Amy Acton, which has Amy's mom telling people not to vote for her because she's a liar, and has "lied her whole life".
From wikipedia:
> Acton has said that after her parents divorced and while she lived with her mother, Donna Arthur, she experienced neglect, abuse, and periods of homelessness, including spending one winter living in a tent on the north side of Youngstown.[7][8][9] Her mother remarried Cledith Arthur, who had already been prosecuted for raping his daughter; according to Acton and her younger brother, Phil Stearns, Arthur sexually abused her.[10][11] Arthur was charged with raping her when she was 12, but charges against him stalled after he fled the state and moved to Pennsylvania, despite several warrants being issued for his arrest over the next three years;[12][13][14][15] Acton's mother was later convicted of felony theft by deception.[9]
Voting is a chore. You have to set aside a block of time, drive to a polling station, stand in line, and vote. Gas is expensive. Time is expensive. Groups of people who are agitated gathering in the same place is risky. The return on that investment of time, at a personal level, is practically nonexistent. From an individual cost-benefit perspective, voting does not make much rational sense.
So you have to appeal to something beyond rationality. Emotion. You need someone to be so swayed by what you say that they forget to think critically and simply go out and vote.
Committees have approved these ads. They understand that the system is not driven purely by rationality. And they have engineered these messages to influence people into making irrational choices voluntarily.
In some states, sure. In many, you simply fill out a form and drop it in your mailbox. Takes approximately ten minutes, which you can do on the toilet if pressed for time. No driving, no waiting, no money spent.
If your state doesn't allow this, it's time to vote in new representation and fix that.
Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about. It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.
Looking at history, one person choosing to vote is statistically useless if the goal is to influence the outcome of a presidential or congressional/senatorial election in the USA.
The chance of one vote being the difference between a tie and a win for a candidate has been approximately zero. And in the extremely rare times when there has been such a one vote difference, there have been re-counts that conclude with a margin that is larger than one vote [0][1].
Mathematically/statistically this makes intuitive sense. One might ask: what's the chance that a vote ends in a tie when there are 10, 100, 100,000... 10 million voters? As the voting pool increases, the chance decreases.
The most common objection is along the lines of, "if everyone decided not to vote because their vote didn't matter, then no one would vote!" Yep, that's correct... but that doesn't describe reality: clearly people vote a lot.
Voting because one enjoys it, gets satisfaction of some sort from it, feels that they are doing their "civic duty" and discharging a responsibility, etc... that's fine. But don't vote because you think you're gonna change the outcome.
This is like asking, "if pigs could fly, what happens?" -> all sorts of things... but pigs can't fly.
"if nobody votes..." is a hypothetical that has never been true because people DO vote. I don't know of a good reason to believe they'll stop voting. Obviously the futility of voting to change the election outcome isn't stopping them so far.
> It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.
I don’t understand that. The fewer people vote, the more impact your vote has, so the more sense it makes to vote (up to a limit, of course. If too few people vote, revolution gray be around the corner)
> Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about.
Try to do an expected value analysis of your vote.
Say the difference between your candidate winning or losing is worth 1000 USD. Multiply that by the odds that your vote will cause them to win. Take that very small number and see if you'd drive 2 minutes for that or just calculate if the lead used up on the pencil is worth that.
That's nice. It would be awesome to have a museum website like this for each primary and mid-term election in the past. Make history and political study much more interesting.
Thank you! That was my initial plan: an archive of past elections. I was especially interested in more local and obscure campaigns for judges, sheriffs, etc. I'll probably add more years and more elections down the line.
This is a really cool idea (and looks nice)!
Are the ranges percentages of the total?
I am finding it slightly annoying that changing the tab sends me to a new page with another hit to my browser hist
Flock Hunt Ad — I wonder if they made that with Opus 5.5?
$90,000 to $105k on Google - Ad revenue is a nice touch.
Interesting: 9.7 million YouTube views are worth approx $12,125 to $29,100 USD in standard long-form ad revenue; you can make some spare cash whilst you run for office as well, pay the bills.
Thank you very much! Google publishes a bundle of its political ad records (https://adstransparency.google.com/), but without video links. So I had a script browse each advertiser's public page in Google's Ads Transparency Center and pick up the YouTube video behind each ad.
As for the anonymity, no real reason behind it, just thought it would be a really nice personal project.
As someone who has managed to stay away from these ads, boy is it disappointing sometimes how much they play to the most simple of human needs and emotions like "I will make things more affordable" and "the other guy is a sell out and corrupt politician". This coming from even the politicians that I support. I guess it's what's effective when needing to gain mass-appeal for an election.
Twice in the past month I drove past a billboard that literally just says "Candidate X will protect benefits" despite benefits not being an issue in the election, and there being not enough seats up for election to enable their opponent to cut benefits if they wanted to, which they didn't. It was nothing more than a silly play for absolutely ignorant voters because the candidate didn't actually have any ideas that distinguished her from her opponent.
Yea. I am in Ohio and at one point I was getting 5 or so an hour. I need to figure out where my number is in the voting record and change it to something undefined.
Crazy how even this got flagged, the mods (or sad tech bros) seem to really work overtime today so not a single midterm submission gets on the frontpage for too long - what a sad bunch of losers!
I knew American politics were wild, but holy hell man, some of these videos are just exploitative - e.g., https://youtu.be/mbNiWWKqt0s
I'm not sure what this person's agenda is, and why they're appearing for an advert in Ohio when their transition that they regret happened in GODDAMNED TEXAS and didn't transition AS A CHILD.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/10/06/woman-accusing-she...
It absolutely reeks of despair when the SLF PAC is paying for videos that are basically "Democrats are putting chemicals in the water that makes the frogs gay".
Part of the reason for the insane ads is that they’re often (not always) created and paid for by groups who don’t have a name to tarnish. They’re like running into that crazy neighbor who suddenly starts talking politics…. and you’re kinda scared.
Try this one:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000011228488/el...
Summary if you don't want to click: Vivek Ramaswamy ran an ad against his opponent, Amy Acton, which has Amy's mom telling people not to vote for her because she's a liar, and has "lied her whole life".
From wikipedia:
> Acton has said that after her parents divorced and while she lived with her mother, Donna Arthur, she experienced neglect, abuse, and periods of homelessness, including spending one winter living in a tent on the north side of Youngstown.[7][8][9] Her mother remarried Cledith Arthur, who had already been prosecuted for raping his daughter; according to Acton and her younger brother, Phil Stearns, Arthur sexually abused her.[10][11] Arthur was charged with raping her when she was 12, but charges against him stalled after he fled the state and moved to Pennsylvania, despite several warrants being issued for his arrest over the next three years;[12][13][14][15] Acton's mother was later convicted of felony theft by deception.[9]
> After Acton's mother lost custody of her
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Acton
"Jesus a radical feminist?" - MAGA Inc.
Voting is a chore. You have to set aside a block of time, drive to a polling station, stand in line, and vote. Gas is expensive. Time is expensive. Groups of people who are agitated gathering in the same place is risky. The return on that investment of time, at a personal level, is practically nonexistent. From an individual cost-benefit perspective, voting does not make much rational sense.
So you have to appeal to something beyond rationality. Emotion. You need someone to be so swayed by what you say that they forget to think critically and simply go out and vote.
Committees have approved these ads. They understand that the system is not driven purely by rationality. And they have engineered these messages to influence people into making irrational choices voluntarily.
> Voting is a chore
In some states, sure. In many, you simply fill out a form and drop it in your mailbox. Takes approximately ten minutes, which you can do on the toilet if pressed for time. No driving, no waiting, no money spent.
If your state doesn't allow this, it's time to vote in new representation and fix that.
The fact check on that: https://www.factcheck.org/2026/09/paxtons-ai-heavy-ad-leaves...
> voting is a chore
compared to the other way of creating political change, it's a vacation.
Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about. It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.
Looking at history, one person choosing to vote is statistically useless if the goal is to influence the outcome of a presidential or congressional/senatorial election in the USA.
The chance of one vote being the difference between a tie and a win for a candidate has been approximately zero. And in the extremely rare times when there has been such a one vote difference, there have been re-counts that conclude with a margin that is larger than one vote [0][1].
Mathematically/statistically this makes intuitive sense. One might ask: what's the chance that a vote ends in a tie when there are 10, 100, 100,000... 10 million voters? As the voting pool increases, the chance decreases.
The most common objection is along the lines of, "if everyone decided not to vote because their vote didn't matter, then no one would vote!" Yep, that's correct... but that doesn't describe reality: clearly people vote a lot.
Voting because one enjoys it, gets satisfaction of some sort from it, feels that they are doing their "civic duty" and discharging a responsibility, etc... that's fine. But don't vote because you think you're gonna change the outcome.
[0]https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w8590/w8590... "THE EMPIRICAL FREQUENCY OF A PIVOTAL VOTE"
[1]https://archive.ph/ThMlo NYT: "Why Vote?"
That doesn't make sense. If nobody votes, what happens?
> If nobody votes, what happens?
This is like asking, "if pigs could fly, what happens?" -> all sorts of things... but pigs can't fly.
"if nobody votes..." is a hypothetical that has never been true because people DO vote. I don't know of a good reason to believe they'll stop voting. Obviously the futility of voting to change the election outcome isn't stopping them so far.
> It's just that it makes sense in aggregate, but for that to make sense everybody must do their part.
I don’t understand that. The fewer people vote, the more impact your vote has, so the more sense it makes to vote (up to a limit, of course. If too few people vote, revolution gray be around the corner)
Well think about it: If nobody votes, what happens?
> Voting makes absolute rational sense, what are you talking about.
Try to do an expected value analysis of your vote. Say the difference between your candidate winning or losing is worth 1000 USD. Multiply that by the odds that your vote will cause them to win. Take that very small number and see if you'd drive 2 minutes for that or just calculate if the lead used up on the pencil is worth that.
That's a weird way to think about democracy and civic duty.
The difference is far, far more than 1000 USD. Just see how much did the current POTUS cost the country and every individual.
How much did you donate to PACs?
Bluntly, none of your business?
That's nice. It would be awesome to have a museum website like this for each primary and mid-term election in the past. Make history and political study much more interesting.
Thank you! That was my initial plan: an archive of past elections. I was especially interested in more local and obscure campaigns for judges, sheriffs, etc. I'll probably add more years and more elections down the line.
Facebook has an archive of political ads, too.
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDUl-fTki3w (James Talarico attack ad against Ken Paxton) looks like it was generated with Opus 5.5
This is a really cool idea (and looks nice)! Are the ranges percentages of the total? I am finding it slightly annoying that changing the tab sends me to a new page with another hit to my browser hist
Thanks a lot! The ranges are the number of videos per race, not percentages.
Why this flagged. Ned voting system for the most absurd ones.
The pro-billionare bunch is flagging everything that shows their massive failure yesterday. Even relevant things like ads and data center stuff.
Flock Hunt Ad — I wonder if they made that with Opus 5.5?
$90,000 to $105k on Google - Ad revenue is a nice touch.
Interesting: 9.7 million YouTube views are worth approx $12,125 to $29,100 USD in standard long-form ad revenue; you can make some spare cash whilst you run for office as well, pay the bills.
Really great project! Could you share a bit more on how you gathered the data?
Out of curiosity, what drove the decision to stay anonymous? A project like this feels like a massive street-cred builder in the data viz community.
Thank you very much! Google publishes a bundle of its political ad records (https://adstransparency.google.com/), but without video links. So I had a script browse each advertiser's public page in Google's Ads Transparency Center and pick up the YouTube video behind each ad.
As for the anonymity, no real reason behind it, just thought it would be a really nice personal project.
As someone who has managed to stay away from these ads, boy is it disappointing sometimes how much they play to the most simple of human needs and emotions like "I will make things more affordable" and "the other guy is a sell out and corrupt politician". This coming from even the politicians that I support. I guess it's what's effective when needing to gain mass-appeal for an election.
Twice in the past month I drove past a billboard that literally just says "Candidate X will protect benefits" despite benefits not being an issue in the election, and there being not enough seats up for election to enable their opponent to cut benefits if they wanted to, which they didn't. It was nothing more than a silly play for absolutely ignorant voters because the candidate didn't actually have any ideas that distinguished her from her opponent.
Is anyone going to talk about the amount of political texts this election? I got hundreds of them here in Texas.
Also the republican ones where viciously disgusting in the way they were attacking. Tons of nearly childish name calling and mudslinging.
Yea. I am in Ohio and at one point I was getting 5 or so an hour. I need to figure out where my number is in the voting record and change it to something undefined.
[flagged]
[dead]
Thought this was just going to be Ohio /s
Crazy how even this got flagged, the mods (or sad tech bros) seem to really work overtime today so not a single midterm submission gets on the frontpage for too long - what a sad bunch of losers!