

Politicians don’t usually spend campaign cash to promote their tweets. But when they do, they might be a Democratic Presidential candidate.

The Center for Responsive Politics’ analysis of political spending data obtained from Twitter found that Beto O’Rourke, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) were three of the top four political spenders on Twitter from when the social media platform began making the data public in June 2018 through the first week of January 2019.

NextGen America also makes the cut. The group is run by billionaire liberal megadonor Tom Steyer, who recently announced he would not run for office.

Twitter’s political spending was largely dominated by Democratic candidates and other spenders on the left. Altogether, Democrats and liberal groups spent over $2.5 million on Twitter political advertising while Republican candidates and conservative groups spent just over half a million.

Equipped with more money than anyone else, it’s not surprising O’Rourke was the top spender overall. But even with all that cash on hand, O’Rourke used Twitter to raise even more money for his record-breaking Senate campaign in Texas. O’Rourke splurged on a handful of ads, spending at least $57,100 and generating 4.1 million impressions on a promoted tweet urging supporters to chip in after news of new spending from a pro-Ted Cruz super PAC.

While O’Rourke spent most of his Twitter cash in October and November with a focus on his race, Harris did the opposite, instead targeting her promoted tweets almost entirely on petitions to oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation and to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation after the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Gillibrand similarly promoted tweets regarding various issues, spending at least $35,400 on a tweet urging Twitter users to sign a petition opposing Kavanaugh and generating 2.9 million impressions.

Pages like “Millionaire Claire,” bankrolled by Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), took on a life of their own with $69,300 in spending on promoted tweets. Using its eponymous Twitter page, SLF spent another $54,200 promoting tweets attacking Democratic Senate candidates Claire McCaskill and Jacky Rosen.

Notably absent from the list of political accounts is Donald Trump, whose @realDonaldTrump handle did not promote any tweets. Facebook and Google, platforms on which Trump has not yet organically accrued the same devout following, are a different story. Trump has spent more than $8 million on Facebook since the website started tracking political tweets in May and another $1.8 million on Google.

This isn’t all that unusual. With a significantly larger user base, Google and Facebook always rake in more from political advertisers.

Super PACs and “dark money” seemed to favor Facebook for political advertising, with many setting up separate pages dedicated to attacking candidates. Though “Millionaire Claire” is one rare example on Twitter, the phenomenon became very common on Facebook, where SLF rolled out “The Joe You Don’t Know,” “Mexico Joe” and the less-snappy “Heidi Heitkamp’s Game of Hypocrisy.”

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The bulk of reported spending on Twitter is made up by disclosing groups and candidates, totaling more than $2.5 million. Non-disclosing groups make up just $56,655 of spending by political and partially disclosing groups make up $13,747.

The liberal Majority Forward, this cycle’s leading dark money spender, shelled out $864,023 on Facebook and $430,800 on Google compared to $13,700 on Twitter. Conservative dark money group One Nation spent more than $1.7 million on Google advertising and $823,139 on Facebook but just $12,700 on Twitter.

While Facebook’s archive shows more than 100,000 pages taking out political ads, Twitter has identified just 92 pages as having run “political” promoted tweets.

Twitter defines “political campaigning” as ads purchased by political committees and candidates registered with the FEC or ads using express advocacy language about a clearly identified candidate for federal office.



Though it provides useful data about federal candidates, Twitter’s list is not exhaustive or comprehensive just yet.

Steyer’s Need to Impeach, for example, does not show up on Twitter’s list, despite being registered with the FEC and promoting political tweets through election season. Those tweets were not labeled as “political” and therefore do not display the usual data such as money spent and impressions earned.

“This account and the promoted tweets it has run should have been certified and labeled accordingly … we’re currently rectifying this,” said Twitter spokesperson Nicholas Pacilio.

Because Need to Impeach is not currently included on Twitter’s list of certified political ad sponsors, information about its spending on that platform remains unknown. Need to Impeach spent more than $2.8 million on Facebook and nearly $1.5 million on Google through the end of 2018.

The amount of digital ad spending reported to the FEC has increased in recent years. A conservative calculation of spending on digital services reported to the FEC by House candidates exceeded $33.3 million in the 2018 election cycle, more than twice the $16.2 million spent in the 2016 election cycle. The increase in digital spending continues a growing trend, rising from $12.7 million in 2014 and just $5.9 million in 2012. Altogether, candidates running for federal office spent more than $71.9 million during the 2018 election cycle, with $29.8 million by Senate candidates and $8.8 million by presidential candidates.

Democrats have spent substantially more than Republicans on digital services in the 2018 election cycle, as reported to FEC. However, Republicans outspent Democrats on digital in the three prior election cycles.

Explore the data:



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