Social media has displaced broadcast television as the leading source Americans turn to for political advocacy and news, according to survey findings released by Adtaxi on June 22, 2026, a shift that reorders the media map campaigns will navigate through the 2026 midterm cycle.

The finding comes from Adtaxi's 2026 Economic & Political Survey & Study, a poll of more than 1,100 U.S. adults conducted through SurveyMonkey beginning in May 2026. Social media registered as the top source for political advocacy and news at 29 percent. Broadcast television followed at 17.4 percent, with connected TV and streaming at 13.7 percent. Newspapers, the medium that once anchored political coverage, drew 6.7 percent.

Denver-based Adtaxi, a performance media agency founded in 2010, has tracked shifts in political affiliation, economic sentiment, and media preferences for more than 15 years, spanning the last recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2026 edition frames a single throughline: financial pressure now shapes how Americans evaluate candidates, brands, and their own purchasing decisions, and the channels carrying political information have moved decisively away from the television-centric model that defined campaigns two decades ago.

The economy dominates every other issue

The survey placed pocketbook concerns far ahead of any competing priority. Nearly half of respondents, 48.6 percent, named the economy and inflation as the issues that matter most to them. Healthcare came a distant second at 17.2 percent. Immigration registered 6.4 percent, crime and public safety 5.3 percent, and social justice 3.2 percent.

That concentration extends into how people expect to behave at the ballot box. More than 66 percent of respondents said their personal financial situation will influence how they vote in upcoming elections, either "a great deal" or "a fair amount." Economic confidence, meanwhile, continued to erode. Only 12.9 percent of Americans expect above-average economic growth over the next year, a figure Adtaxi reported as down nearly one-third from its findings a year earlier.

The pressure shows up in the specifics of household spending. Grocery prices ranked as the leading financial concern at 23.6 percent, ahead of gas and transportation costs at 15 percent and housing affordability at 12 percent. These are not abstract macro indicators. They are the daily line items that, according to Adtaxi, voters now carry into their assessment of political messages and brand communications alike.

"Economic anxiety is central to how Americans across party lines evaluate candidates, brands, and even their everyday purchasing decisions," said Murry Woronoff, Director of Research at Adtaxi. "What stands out in this year's data is that it reflects a more cautious consumer mindset influencing political attitudes."

A fractured, digital-first information environment

The media finding sits at the center of the report's argument. Woronoff described the change in the information environment as fundamental. "Search, streaming TV, social media, and mobile platforms now dominate political information discovery and advertising responsiveness across voter groups, which is a dramatic shift from the traditional television-centric model that defined campaigns just two decades ago," he said.

The numbers describe a landscape no longer organized around a single dominant channel. Social media's 29 percent lead is meaningful, but it does not command a majority. Broadcast television, connected TV, search, and mobile each hold a share of the audience, and the report concludes that the traditional television-centric political media model has fractured into a fragmented ecosystem driven by search, social, streaming, and mobile consumption.

For campaigns and the agencies that serve them, fragmentation is a planning problem as much as a targeting one. A message that once reached a broad cross-section through evening broadcast news must now be assembled across platforms with different audiences, different measurement standards, and different costs. Adtaxi, which operates across CTV and streaming, programmatic, search, and social, works with platforms including Google, The Trade Desk, Meta, and TikTok, and the report positions precision-targeted digital strategy as the response to a splintered audience.

Where the Adtaxi data diverges from other 2026 surveys

The picture Adtaxi paints of social media ascendant is not the only reading of the 2026 electorate, and the divergence is instructive. A survey from the Video Advertising Bureau, reported by PPC Land in March, found that potential voters trust television news far more than social platforms. In that VAB study, drawn from a December 2025 survey of U.S. adults conducted with Dynata, only 9 percent of potential voters named social media as their most trusted news source, while TV news dominated the trust hierarchy across party lines.

A separate VAB infographic covered by PPC Land sharpened the contrast, reporting that voters trust TV news at a rate six times higher than social media, and that 51 percent named social media as the top source of fake or misleading information. The tension between the two datasets is not a contradiction so much as a measurement of two different things. Adtaxi measured where people go for political news and advocacy. VAB measured which sources people trust. A channel can be the most used and simultaneously the least trusted, and the 2026 evidence suggests social media occupies exactly that position.

That distinction carries weight for anyone allocating political budgets. High usage indicates reach. Low trust indicates that reach may not translate into persuasion at the same rate. The methodological caveat matters as well: VAB is a trade organization representing multiscreen television providers, giving it an interest in findings that favor TV, while Adtaxi is a digitally oriented media agency. Both datasets should be read with the commercial position of their authors in view.

Consumers remain wary of brands in the political arena

Beyond channel preference, the survey probed a question that has occupied marketers for years: whether audiences want brands to weigh in on political and social issues. The answer, in Adtaxi's data, tilts toward caution. A plurality of respondents, 42.4 percent, said brands should remain neutral and focus on products and services rather than political messaging.

The pattern splits sharply along partisan lines. Democrats posted the highest level of support for brands openly sharing their political and social positions, at 33 percent in favor. Among Republicans and Independents, fewer than one-fifth backed brands taking public stances on political and social matters. That gap frames a genuine strategic dilemma for national advertisers whose customer base spans the partisan divide, where a stance that resonates with one segment risks alienating another.

The Adtaxi reading aligns directionally with a broader body of consumer research showing hesitancy about brand activism, though the exact figures vary by study and by year. What the survey adds is a partisan breakdown tied to the same economic anxiety that runs through the rest of its findings. When households are watching grocery and gas prices, the report suggests, they are evaluating brand behavior through a value-first lens rather than an ideological one.

Political engagement stays high as the midterms approach

Whatever their channel preferences, respondents reported an electorate that is paying attention. Roughly 63 percent said they are likely to vote in an election over the next 12 months. With the midterm elections less than five months from the survey's framing, 28 percent said they were already actively following political or advocacy news, and another 28 percent regularly discuss political issues with others.

That level of engagement matters commercially because it coincides with a spending cycle running at a record pace. PPC Land has reported that political CTV spending projections for the 2026 midterm cycle rose to $2.7 billion, up from a prior estimate of $2.4 billion, according to AdImpact estimates. Broadcast television political spend is projected to reach $5.6 billion for the full cycle. The elevated engagement Adtaxi documents is, in effect, the demand-side counterpart to that supply-side surge.

Why the finding matters for the marketing community

The Adtaxi survey lands in the middle of a sustained build-out of political advertising infrastructure that PPC Land has tracked through 2026. The vendor activity has been continuous. Comscore and Yahoo DSP introduced Proximic Political Audiences in March to coordinate linear and streaming exposures for voters in contested House, Senate, and gubernatorial races. Digital Remedy launched The Political Desk in May, assembling more than 17 data partners into a single platform for planning and measuring voter-facing advertising across connected television, video, display, audio, native, social, search, and digital out-of-home. Nexxen and ADvolution brought influencer fandom segments into programmatic political targeting, a direct response to voters whose media runs through creator ecosystems that standard voter files miss.

That last move maps closely onto the Adtaxi finding. If social media is where 29 percent of the electorate turns for political news, then the creator communities operating on those platforms represent audiences that conventional targeting does not reach cleanly. The infrastructure investments and the consumption data are describing the same shift from opposite ends.

Local television, still the largest single destination for political dollars, has been automating to keep pace. Gray Media partnered with Madhive's AI DSP to target 117 markets ahead of the midterm cycle, layering political audience data from providers including L2, Tunnl, Data Trust, and TargetSmart onto premium local inventory. The through-line across all of it is that fragmentation has become the operating condition, and the platforms competing for political budgets are building for a world where no single channel commands the audience.

Adtaxi's data supplies the demand-side rationale for that entire wave of activity. The finding that pocketbook issues dominate at 48.6 percent, combined with the finding that more than 66 percent will let their finances shape their vote, points to messaging evaluated through a personal financial lens. The report concludes that organizations emphasizing authenticity, economic empathy, practical value, and precision-targeted digital strategies will be best positioned to build trust and engagement in the 2026 environment.

Methodology and cautions

The study was conducted using SurveyMonkey, launching in May 2026 and surveying more than 1,100 U.S. adults nationwide. Adtaxi reported acceptable response rates across all nine U.S. Census Divisions and across demographic ranges including gender, age, political party, and household income, and said responses were collected anonymously.

Two cautions bear noting for professional readers. Adtaxi is a media agency with a commercial interest in digital-first channels, and a survey emphasizing the ascendance of social, search, and streaming aligns with that positioning. The finding also measures self-reported source preference rather than observed behavior or advertising response, and self-reported media consumption is an imperfect proxy for where persuasion actually occurs. Read alongside the VAB trust data, the Adtaxi numbers describe a media environment where the most-used channel and the most-trusted channel are no longer the same, and campaigns spending against the 2026 cycle will be resolving that gap in real time.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Adtaxi, a Denver-based performance media agency founded in 2010, drawing on research led by Director of Research Murry Woronoff.

What: The 2026 Economic & Political Survey & Study found social media has become the leading source for political advocacy and news at 29 percent, ahead of broadcast TV at 17.4 percent and connected TV/streaming at 13.7 percent, while 48.6 percent of respondents named the economy and inflation as their top issue and 42.4 percent said brands should stay neutral on politics.

When: The findings were released on June 22, 2026, based on a survey of more than 1,100 U.S. adults conducted through SurveyMonkey beginning in May 2026.

Where: The United States, with responses collected across all nine U.S. Census Divisions.

Why: The data documents a fragmented, digital-first political media environment shaped by economic anxiety, offering campaigns and advertisers a demand-side reading of the audience as political CTV spending for the 2026 midterm cycle reaches a projected $2.7 billion.