Picture this: You open your phone to check in with friends, and instead you’re greeted by a barrage of political ads. Some are smooth and hopeful, promising change and a brighter future. Others are sharp and angry, warning that the world will end if you vote the wrong way. They come at you from every direction—before videos, in sponsored posts, as memes, in your text messages, even in your mail. And as Election Day creeps closer, the flood gets worse. Experts say this is no accident. Political advertisements are deliberately flooding social media feeds and competing for voters’ attention, and the people behind them know exactly what they’re doing. Montana State University Billings political science professor Paul Pope has watched this happen cycle after cycle, and he says the intensity is always highest in the final stretch. The reason? Panic. The candidates and groups behind those ads know that undecided voters are still up for grabs. They know that a single viral post can shift the conversation. So they pour more money into digital platforms, hoping to break through the noise. It’s exhausting, and that’s exactly the point. When you’re tired and overwhelmed, you’re more likely to share something out of emotion than out of careful thought. The people funding these ads are counting on that. They want you to react, not reflect. They want you to feel, not fact-check. And if you’re feeling anxious about the future of democracy, you’re not alone—but understanding what’s happening can help you take control.
Where does all that money come from? A lot of it flows through political action committees, or PACs. These are organizations that are technically independent from the candidates themselves. They pool money from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups, then spend it on political ads, mailers, and digital campaigns. Because they don’t coordinate directly with candidates, they have more freedom to say things that might be too harsh or too controversial for a campaign to say out loud. That’s why you’ll see an ad attacking a candidate that appears to come from a group you’ve never heard of. It’s not a random coincidence. It’s a strategy. In Montana, outside groups have become especially active in the U.S. Senate race, pouring millions into ads that try to define the candidates before they can define themselves. Pope told MTN that he sees more and more of these ads as Election Day approaches, and he’s blunt about why: “They think they’re losing or they’re behind in the polls. They get desperate and so they start saying really nasty things out there.” Desperation makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, and political operatives are no exception. The nastier the ad, the more attention it gets. The more attention it gets, the more it spreads. And in the final days of a campaign, negative ads are often the weapon of choice. It’s not about offering solutions or explaining policies. It’s about making you afraid of the other side. It’s about painting a picture so dark that you feel like you have no choice but to support their candidate. That might sound cynical, but it’s how modern campaigns work. The sooner you recognize it, the harder it is for them to fool you.
Pope cautions that many of these ads contain misleading information, and he wants voters to fact-check what they see. His advice? Look at the language. “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.” Think about the ads that make you the angriest. They use words like “radical,” “crooked,” “treasonous,” “socialist”—loaded terms designed to trigger an immediate emotional response. They rarely cite sources. They rarely provide context. They take a vote out of context, a quote out of context, a policy out of context, and turn it into something unrecognizable. They may use images that are decades old and present them as current. They may blame one person for something that happened over many years and many administrations. It’s all designed to simplify a complicated world into a simple, frightening story. And it works, especially when people are busy and don’t have time to dig deeper. But Pope’s point is that the truth is out there. It’s just harder to find. It requires reading beyond the headline. It requires checking multiple sources. It requires asking who paid for the ad and what their agenda might be. It requires being willing to change your mind when new information comes in. That’s a lot to ask in a world of 30-second videos and one-line captions. But it’s exactly what we need to do if we want to avoid being manipulated. As Pope says, the people behind misleading ads are counting on you not to research. The best way to prove them wrong is to do the research anyway.
Artificial intelligence is making this problem even more complicated. Laura Haacke is the security awareness program manager at CyberMontana, and she spends her days thinking about how technology can be used to deceive people. Her warning is simple: “AI does give us misinformation only because people give AI misinformation.” In other words, AI tools are not evil by themselves. They are like a giant mirror. They take in everything that’s on the internet—true and false, good and bad—and use it to generate new content. If humans fill the internet with lies, AI will produce more lies. That means we are already seeing AI-generated images of candidates doing things they never did, AI-generated audio of politicians saying things they never said, and AI-generated articles that look like real news but are actually fabricated. It’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real. That’s why Haacke emphasizes independent confirmation. “Look for independent confirmation. Big news stories will have more than one outlet sending that information out,” she said. If a story is real, it won’t be confined to a single obscure website. It will be picked up by major newspapers, broadcast networks, and wire services. If it’s only on one site, or if it’s being shared mostly through social media with no reliable source, be suspicious. Haacke also wants people to take personal responsibility. “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. That means checking the URL, reading the “About” page, looking at the date, verifying the photo with a reverse image search, and being honest with yourself about your own biases. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. In a digital world, the pause before you click share might be the most important moment of the election.
The money behind all this is staggering. According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks campaign spending, the 2026 midterm election cycle is projected to reach $11.9 billion in total spending. That would make it the most expensive midterm cycle in American history. Let that sink in: nearly twelve billion dollars spent on ads, mailers, staff, travel, and all the machinery of campaigning. That’s more than the GDP of some small countries. And a huge chunk of that money is going into your social media feed, trying to convince you, outrage you, or energize you. Pope says the record spending points to a larger story. “This is going to be one for the record books in terms of spending,” he said. “We’re going to see a huge voter turnout.” Those two things often go together. When races are competitive and the stakes feel high, more people vote. And when more people vote, campaigns spend even more to reach them. It’s a cycle. But it’s important to remember that spending doesn’t equal truth. An expensive ad is not necessarily an honest one. In fact, the most expensive ads are often the most misleading, because it takes a lot of money to saturate the airwaves and social media with a message. The groups spending that money are not doing it out of civic duty. They’re doing it to win. They believe that if they repeat a message often enough, it will stick, whether it’s true or not. That’s the power of repetition. It creates familiarity, and familiarity creates trust—even for things that are false. So when you see the same claim over and over, don’t assume it’s true. Assume it’s effective. Ask yourself who benefits, what evidence exists, and why they need to say it so many times. The answers might surprise you.
So what can you do? You don’t need to be a political scientist or a cybersecurity expert to protect yourself from misleading information. You just need to be a little more thoughtful. Before you believe an ad, find out who paid for it. Before you share a post, see if any reputable news organization is reporting the same story. Before you vote, look at the candidates’ own records, their own speeches, their own policy plans—not just the attack ads that are designed to make you afraid. Pope and Haacke both make the same point from different angles: in a democracy, the ultimate fact-checker is an informed citizen. We can’t rely on social media platforms or political campaigns to fix this. We have to take responsibility for what we consume and what we put out into the world. That means reading beyond the headline, watching the full video, searching for the original source, and even talking to people who disagree with us. It means being willing to say, “I don’t know yet” instead of sharing something in the heat of the moment. It means recognizing that your own emotions can be used against you. The ads that make you angry, the posts that make you scared, the memes that make you laugh—all of them are tools. Some are honest. Some are not. Your job is to tell the difference. Election Day is your chance to have your say. The ads will eventually disappear. The mailers will end up in the recycling bin. The viral posts will be forgotten. But your vote will shape the future of your community, your state, and your country. That’s worth a little extra effort. So take a breath, do your research, and cast your ballot with confidence. Don’t let the noise drown out your voice. After all, the people spending billions of dollars on these ads are trying to earn your trust. Make sure they actually deserve it.