Yes. Ad rates drop after Election Day, and the drop starts the next morning. Political money leaves the market on November 4, 2026, and for roughly two weeks the inventory it was occupying is available before holiday demand fills it. The businesses that use that window reserve it in October, not in November.
This is the most reliable pricing opportunity in the fourth quarter and the one fewest local businesses plan for. The reason is timing. By the time the rates are visibly better, the good placements are being claimed by whoever had creative approved and a buy ready to place.
Do ad rates actually drop after the election?
They do, and the reason is mechanical rather than seasonal. Political advertising is deadline-driven. It does not taper. The spending exists to influence a vote on a specific date, and the day after that date the demand is simply gone.
The concentration is what makes the cliff so sharp. Basis reports that roughly 50% of a cycle’s political dollars run in the 30 days before Election Day, with about 25% concentrated in the final 10 days, and that November through December historically offers favorable pricing as political dollars exit the market.
Read that second number again. A quarter of an entire election cycle’s spending lands in the last ten days. That is the pressure that makes late October expensive, and it is also why November 4 feels like a different market rather than a slightly cheaper one.
How much money is actually leaving the market?
Enough to change pricing in every market in the country. AdImpact projects the 2026 cycle at $11.6 billion, a record, up from $8.9 billion in the 2022 midterms.
Where it sits matters more than the total, because that tells you which channels loosen up. AdImpact’s updated projections put broadcast television at $5.6 billion or about 48% of cycle spending, connected TV at $2.7 billion or 23%, cable at $1.4 billion, and digital across Facebook, Google, Snapchat and X at $1.6 billion.
Almost three quarters of political money is in video. That is where the relief shows up on November 4, and it is why this window is more useful to a business that can run video than to one running search alone.
Which channels loosen most, and which barely move?
Broadcast and connected TV move most, because that is where the money was. Search barely moves, because political campaigns were never bidding against your commercial keywords in the first place.
| Channel | How much it loosens | What to do with it |
| Broadcast TV | Most. Nearly half the political money exits here | Reserve November 4 onward in October. Ask about preemption protection |
| Connected TV and OTT | Significant, and it reprices fastest because it is programmatic | Best value for most local businesses. Raise bids and let it buy |
| Cable | Meaningful, concentrated in news programming | Good for narrow targeting at lower cost than broadcast |
| Radio and streaming audio | Moderate | Worth it if your creative already exists. Fast to produce |
| Paid social | Moderate, mostly in contested markets | Costs normalize. Push prospecting you deferred in October |
| Paid search | Barely. It was never the pressure point | No change needed. Keep funding it as usual |
| Direct mail and email | None from politics, though mail volume drops | Mail gets less crowded in mailboxes, which helps response |
One honest caveat about numbers. We are not going to publish a specific percentage that CPMs fall after Election Day, because it varies enormously by market, daypart, and how contested the local races were, and the credible published research does not give a single figure. What is well documented is the direction, the timing, and the concentration of spending that causes it. Anyone quoting you an exact nationwide discount is estimating and should say so.
How long does the window stay open?
About two weeks, and it closes gradually rather than shutting. Political demand disappears on November 4. Holiday demand is already building and reaches full weight in the back half of the month, so the cheap period is the gap between those two curves.
In practical terms, November 4 through roughly November 17 is the soft stretch in most markets. After that, retail and holiday advertisers absorb the slack, and by Thanksgiving week you are buying into the most expensive video environment of the year.
That gives you about ten business days. It is enough to run a real flight if the creative is finished and the buy is placed. It is not enough to develop a concept, get it approved, and produce it.
Markets with contested races stay soft slightly longer, because they absorbed more weight going in and local advertisers there are slower to re-enter. That is worth asking your rep about directly rather than assuming the national pattern applies to your DMA.
“Everybody knows the inventory gets cheap on November 4. Almost nobody has creative approved and ready to run on November 4, which is why it stays cheap.”
— Liz Mbwambo, Upwynn Marketing
What should you have ready before November 3?
Everything except the money. The whole point is that you cannot build this in the window, because the window is the payoff for work done in October.
- Creative finished and approved. Not a concept. Finished spots, in every length and aspect ratio you will need. This is the step that eliminates most businesses from the opportunity.
- A written buy, ready to place. Stations and platforms you want, dayparts, weights, and a budget. Talk to your rep in October about November 4 availability.
- Landing pages live and tested. If the flight drives to a page, that page should exist and load fast on a phone before the flight starts.
- Tracking verified. Confirm conversions fire before you spend, not after. A cheap flight you cannot measure teaches you nothing and you will not be able to justify repeating it.
- Audiences built. Retargeting pools and customer lists uploaded and processed, so the reach you buy has somewhere to funnel into.
- A decision about the money. Know now which budget this comes from. In practice it is usually December weight pulled forward, and that trade needs deciding before the week it happens.
- Preemption terms understood. Broadcast buys in a soft market can still be preempted. Ask what happens if your spot is bumped and what makeup you get.
If your October is currently about surviving political pricing rather than preparing for what follows it, our guide to advertising during election season covers the defensive half of this, and this post is the offensive half.
Who should use this window hardest?
Businesses that need broad local awareness rather than immediate search intent, and businesses with a fourth-quarter selling season that has not peaked yet.
Dealerships. The strongest fit, which is why this sits on our calendar next to the year-end sales event work. November and December are the biggest months on the floor, video drives showroom traffic, and the post-election window lands exactly when a dealership needs to be building awareness for its year-end event. Our breakdown of dealership Black Friday sales event marketing covers how that ten-week build is sequenced, and this window is the cheapest reach inside it.
Home services. Heating season demand is arriving, and cheap video reach in November builds the brand recognition that makes an emergency call go to you rather than whoever is first in the search results.
Retail and restaurants. Two weeks of affordable awareness immediately before the holiday peak, at the exact moment shoppers are deciding where they will spend.
Anyone launching something in Q1. Reach bought in mid-November is cheaper than reach bought in January, and the audiences you build now are the ones you retarget then.
The businesses that get the least from it are pure lead-generation operations running entirely on search. For them, November 4 is an ordinary Wednesday.
What does this look like in Orlando?
Florida is a particularly good market to be waiting for November 4, because it is a particularly bad market to be buying video in October. The state has a governor’s race and a Senate special election on the same November 3 ballot, which means political money saturating Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville rather than concentrating in a few districts.
Two statewide races also means the exit is larger. The more political weight a market absorbed before the election, the more visible the relief afterward. Orlando should be one of the clearer examples of that in the country this cycle.
The local pattern we see is a business that spent October frustrated about broadcast pricing and never connected that frustration to an opportunity three weeks later. What we do with Central Florida clients in early October is separate the media plan into two documents: what runs through November 3, and what is waiting to be placed on November 4. The second document is usually the shorter one and the better investment.
Why does almost nobody use this window?
Because it requires spending attention in October on something that pays off in November, and October is the month everyone is already overwhelmed. The opportunity is widely known and rarely acted on, which is precisely why it stays available.
Three things get in the way, and we run into all three every cycle.
Creative production takes longer than people think. A business decides in late October to take advantage of cheap November inventory, then discovers that writing, shooting, editing, and approving a spot takes four weeks. The window closes while the video is in review.
Budgets are annual, and this is a reallocation. Using the window usually means moving December money into November, and that needs a decision from somebody who is thinking about the holidays rather than about media pricing. When the conversation happens on November 5, it is too late to matter.
It looks opportunistic rather than strategic. Buying because something is briefly cheap feels like a tactic rather than a plan, so it loses to whatever was already on the calendar. The businesses that do it well have it on the calendar.
The version we see most often is a client who asks in mid-November why their competitor suddenly seems to be everywhere. The answer is usually that the competitor booked in October. There is no clever targeting behind it and no larger budget. Somebody simply had a spot finished and a buy written before Election Day, and bought two weeks of reach at a price nobody else was positioned to take.
What about digital and social specifically?
Digital reprices faster than broadcast and needs less lead time, which makes it the practical entry point for businesses that cannot produce a television spot in three weeks. Programmatic auctions adjust within hours of demand leaving, where a broadcast rate card is negotiated.
Connected TV is the standout. It behaves like digital in how quickly it reprices and like television in what it delivers, and AdImpact has political CTV spending at about 23% of the cycle. When that exits, a local advertiser can buy premium streaming placements in early November at prices that will not exist again until January.
Paid social normalizes rather than collapses, because political social spending is a smaller share of the total. What changes is more useful than the price: the feed gets quieter. Six weeks of political content competing for attention ends, and ordinary commercial creative stops fighting for space against outrage. Engagement rates on the same ads frequently look better in mid-November than they did in October, with no change to the campaign.
A practical sequencing note for accounts without video. Move deferred prospecting budget into paid social and CTV on November 4, keep search flat, and treat the two weeks as an audience-building exercise rather than a direct-response push. You are buying cheap entries into a retargeting pool you will monetize in December.
How do you know you actually got the discount?
Compare cost per thousand impressions for the same channel and daypart against the last two weeks of October, and against the same weeks last year if you have them. Without a baseline you have a cheap feeling rather than a measured result.
What we look at when reviewing a post-election flight:
- CPM, same channel, October versus November. The headline comparison. Pull the last two weeks of October as the peak baseline.
- Cost per completed view on video. More honest than CPM, because it accounts for whether the cheap impressions were actually watched.
- Reach and frequency delivered against what was bought. Soft markets sometimes mean under-delivery or preemption, which quietly erases the savings.
- Retargeting pool growth. The clearest sign the reach was real. If the pool did not grow, the impressions did not land on people who then visited you.
- Branded search volume. Awareness advertising should produce a measurable lift in people searching your name. This is the cleanest signal that video did its job.
Write the comparison down and keep it. Election cycles come around, and a documented result from 2026 is what justifies the same buy in 2028 without having the argument again.
What if you miss the window?
Then take the second-cheapest one, which arrives in the first two weeks of January. Holiday advertisers exit as abruptly as political ones, and January is consistently soft before businesses restart their annual plans.
The trade-off is that January reach does not help a fourth-quarter selling season. It helps a first-quarter one. For a dealership or a retailer whose year-end event is the point, missing November means missing it, and the honest answer is to plan earlier next cycle rather than pretend January substitutes.
There is also a smaller window worth knowing about between the Monday after Cyber Monday and roughly December 10, when the earliest holiday advertisers have spent their front-loaded budgets and the shipping-deadline push has not started. It is narrower and less predictable than the post-election window, and in some markets it does not appear at all.
What should you not do?
Three mistakes turn this window into a waste of money.
Do not buy reach you cannot convert. Cheap impressions are still a cost. If nothing downstream captures the demand, you have bought awareness with no way to bank it. Build the retargeting audience and the landing page first.
Do not raid your December budget without deciding to. Pulling weight forward into mid-November is often correct, and it is a choice with a consequence. Shipping-deadline weeks in December convert well, and a business that spent everything in the cheap window can find itself quiet when intent is highest.
Do not assume soft pricing means good placement. The inventory freed by political buyers is not automatically the inventory you want. Judge the buy on whether it reaches your customer, not on the discount. A bargain in the wrong daypart is not a bargain.
Want your November buy placed the day inventory opens? Upwynn Marketing will build the post-election flight and have it ready to place on November 4, and we will review your current plan in a free consultation. We use real experience and 90+ data sources for the best targeting, with no long-term contracts and hands-on support. See how we work with dealerships, or start with our media buying services.
Frequently asked questions
Do advertising rates really drop right after Election Day?
Yes, and the change is abrupt rather than gradual. Political advertising is tied to a voting date, so demand disappears on November 4 rather than tapering. Basis reports that about 50% of a cycle’s political dollars run in the final 30 days and 25% in the final 10, which is why the drop-off is so sharp.
How long do post-election advertising rates stay low?
Roughly two weeks in most markets, from November 4 through the middle of the month. Holiday advertisers absorb the available inventory after that, and by Thanksgiving week video pricing is at its annual peak.
Which channels get cheapest after the election?
Broadcast television and connected TV, because that is where political money concentrates. AdImpact projects broadcast at about 48% of 2026 cycle spending and CTV at 23%. Paid search changes very little, since political campaigns were not competing for commercial search intent.
When do I need to book to get post-election inventory?
October. Have creative finished and approved and the buy written before November 3, because the window is only about ten business days and it goes to advertisers who are ready rather than advertisers who are deciding.
Is this worth it for a small local business?
It depends on whether you can use video reach. If you have or can afford a usable spot and a fourth-quarter selling season, this is the cheapest broad awareness you will buy all year. If you run only search and your demand is purely intent-driven, the window does not help you much.
Written by Liz Mbwambo, Founder + CEO of Upwynn Marketing, an Orlando data-driven marketing agency. Connect with Liz on LinkedIn.
