Republicans have spent $53 million on immigration-related political ads since January. Democrats have spent $17 million. That gap is not a rounding error — it is a strategic choice, and both parties made it deliberately. The question is whether either of them has read the room correctly.
The Numbers Are Not Close
An NPR analysis of ad data from the firm AdImpact puts the disparity in blunt, embarrassing terms. Since January, Republicans and their supporting organizations have run nearly 300 ads that mention or focus on immigration. Democrats and their allies have run 62. Republican ads have aired in 88 races across 27 states. Democratic ads have run in 20 races across 11 states.
The spending gap is $36 million. Republicans at $53 million total. Democrats at $17 million. That is not a close race. That is one team showing up to a gunfight and the other team showing up to a book club.
According to AdImpact data cited by NPR, 'Donald Trump' is the top subject in TV ad buys for both parties. For Republicans, 'immigration' ranks second in spending. For Democrats, 'ICE' comes in third, after healthcare. So yes, both parties are engaging with the issue. Just not at anything close to the same volume or intensity.
What Republicans Are Actually Saying
Some of these ads are exactly as subtle as you'd expect. The MAGA KY PAC, which was formed specifically to take out Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in his primary, ran a spot that declared: "Republicans stood up for Americans. Democrats sat down for illegals." That ad cost over $831,000. Massie, a frequent critic of Trump, lost his race to Trump-endorsed candidate Ed Gallrein, so the investment paid off, if your goal is to purge any remaining Republicans who occasionally think for themselves.
Among the pricier entries: a $928,000 ad buy in the Michigan governor's race featuring Republican candidate Perry Johnson, who told voters he'd be "incredibly supportive of ICE coming here and removing these fraudsters" — referring to undocumented immigrants receiving state benefits. Johnson describes himself as a MAGA Conservative. He has a lot of company in that self-description, and not much in the way of originality.
Mike Marinella, national press secretary at the National Republican Congressional Committee, told NPR that Republican candidates have "a large menu of issues" on which they hold popular positions. He listed the border, crime, and the economy, arguing that immigration "intersects with each of them." That is not wrong, exactly. It is also not an accident that the intersection always runs in the same direction.
Why Republicans Think This Works
Immigration was a winning issue for Republicans in 2024. That is not spin, that is the historical record. Voters in swing states rated immigration among their top concerns, and Republicans beat Democrats on the issue decisively. The party is betting that the same formula applies in 2026, even as the policy execution has grown dramatically more chaotic and violent.
NPR's analysis notes that the ad data runs only through June, before immigration enforcement officers shot and killed people in Maine and Texas in July. Whether those incidents change the political math remains to be seen. Cameron Shelton, a professor of political economy at Claremont McKenna College, told NPR that "campaigns are not trying to change minds. They're trying to shape what the election's about." Republicans believe immigration is the kind of issue that mobilizes their base without requiring them to convince anyone new.
Shelton also made a point worth paying attention to: these early ads are signals, not just to voters, but to donors, activists, interest groups, and local candidates. When Republican campaigns flood the airwaves with immigration content, they are coordinating an entire party apparatus around a single frame. That is a real strategic advantage, and Democrats have not found an equally galvanizing counter-frame.
What Democrats Are Doing Instead
Democrats, to be fair, are not ignoring immigration entirely. At the start of 2026, some Democrats in states facing intense enforcement crackdowns got loud. Democrats in New Jersey, Illinois, and Minnesota called to abolish ICE and argued the Trump administration had gone too far. The Illinois Future PAC spent over $800,000 on each of two ads supporting Juliana Stratton's position on ICE abolition; Stratton later won the Illinois Democratic primary for Senate.
But as NPR reports, months into the year, Democrats have largely pivoted to other topics, particularly healthcare, often to differentiate themselves from members of their own party. That is a telling detail. Democrats are running ads about healthcare partly because they need to separate themselves from other Democrats. That is not the posture of a party that knows exactly what it wants to say.
The primary season is now more than half over, according to NPR. Since more than 90% of seats in gubernatorial, House, and Senate races are considered safe for one party or another, the primary has been decisive in a huge number of contests this cycle. Republicans used that window to plant a flag on immigration. Democrats used it to argue about themselves.
The Dingo Take
Here is what the data is actually telling us. Republicans have decided that immigration is so powerful an issue they are willing to run nearly five times as many ads about it as Democrats, at three times the cost, across more than four times as many states. They are doing this even as the policy the ads celebrate has resulted in documented abuses, wrongful deportations, and people getting shot by federal agents on American soil. The cruelty is not a bug they are trying to explain away. For a significant portion of the electorate, it is the feature they are advertising.
Democrats, meanwhile, are in the familiar position of fighting on a dozen fronts at once while Republicans fight on one. Healthcare is a genuinely better issue for Democrats than immigration, on the pure polling numbers. The problem is that political advertising is not just about persuasion; it is about defining what the election is about. If Republicans get to decide that this election is a referendum on immigration, Democrats debating the finer points of Medicaid expansion are going to be arguing in a room nobody is watching.
The 2026 midterms are still months away. A lot can change. ICE agents killing people in Maine and Texas might shift the public mood in ways the June ad data does not capture. Or it might not, because American politics has spent a decade demonstrating that the things which should be disqualifying often are not. Republicans are betting on the latter. They have $36 million more in evidence than Democrats do right now.
