Everyone's worried about AI deepfakes in politics. Becki Wright says that's not the real story.

Becki, founder of Proximity and a former candidate and campaign manager, joins Eric Wilson to talk about what AI is actually doing in campaigns right now — mostly quiet, mostly mundane, and mostly happening on downballot races that can't afford a full-time staff. She breaks down the three failure modes of off-the-shelf AI tools (the sycophancy problem, the averaging effect, and hallucination), why voters are growing more suspicious of anything that smells AI-generated, and why the campaigns that get burned by AI are usually the ones that let it replace judgment instead of amplifying it.

Her bottom line: let AI handle scale and speed. Keep the human in the loop for everything else.

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Every pollster knows the problem: for every hundred voters you ask to take a poll, only one or two actually respond. So what if AI could just answer the questions for them? It's a seductive idea — and Ben Leff has put it to the test.

Ben is co-founder and CEO of Verasight, a survey research firm founded by academics and trusted by leading institutions and media organizations. He and his colleagues G. Elliott Morris and Peter Enns recently published a series of papers asking the question the industry is buzzing about: can AI digital twins replace human survey respondents? Their verdict, after rigorous real-world testing, is a firm — for now.

In this conversation with host Eric Wilson, Ben breaks down exactly what synthetic sampling is, how Verasight built and stress-tested it, and where it consistently fell apart. Ben sees a narrow lane where synthetic data could earn a legitimate spot in the toolkit — as a directional pre-screen, a quick and cheap starting point before committing to a full sample. But for anything requiring precision in close races, the humans still have to show up.

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AI adoption in political consulting is accelerating — but is the industry keeping up, or splitting in two? Eric Wilson sits down with Julie Sweet, Director of Advocacy and Industry Relations at the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC), to dig into the findings of AAPC's March 2026 member survey on AI use across the profession. They unpack what real integration looks like versus chatbot-level tinkering, why larger firms are pulling ahead on agentic tools, and what that gap means for smaller consultancies heading into 2028.

Then the conversation shifts to the AAPC Foundation's Disclaimer Effect Study — the first empirical research on how AI disclosures in political advertising actually affect voter trust. The results are striking: slapping an AI disclaimer on an ad, even a traditionally produced one, reliably tanks credibility. And the voters least familiar with the technology are the least helped by the disclaimers designed to protect them.

With 30 states now operating under a patchwork of AI disclosure laws — and two already enjoined on First Amendment grounds — Sweet and Wilson make the case for data-backed policy over reactive regulation, and look ahead to a future where agentic systems aren't just assisting campaigns, they may be running parts of them.

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Adrianne Marsh, CEO of Altum Insight, came to rural Nebraska expecting to hear about the economy. What her team found instead stopped them cold: deep, values-rooted fear of artificial intelligence — not about jobs or data centers, but about trust, truth, and a way of life under threat. Adrianne joins Eric to break down the qualitative research behind that finding, what it means for Democratic strategy in 2026, and why the generational breakdown of AI skepticism defied every assumption — including her own.

They also get into the nuts and bolts of how Altum Insight does its research, why traditional polling instruments miss the most important voter sentiments, and where campaigns should and shouldn't be leaning on AI heading into the midterms.

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Winning arguments doesn't win elections. Persuasion does — and they're not the same thing. On this episode, Eric Wilson talks with Josh Bandoch, head of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute and author of How to Get What You Want: Mastering the Art and Science of Persuasion (Simon & Schuster), about what the neuroscience and psychology of persuasion actually tell us — and what most campaigns keep getting wrong.

Bandoch walks through four cognitive realities that shape how voters receive political messages: we feel before we reason, we respond to vision over opposition, our moral foundations vary across the political spectrum, and story always beats data. The conversation gets practical fast — from why the "logic tsunami" approach keeps backfiring on policy advocates, to how candidates can deploy the "them first" mindset on the doors, in ads, and across every piece of campaign communication heading into 2026.

Josh Bandoch is a former speechwriter for cabinet secretaries and a strategic communications consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton. How to Get What You Want is available now.

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For decades, campaigns have won by borrowing — getting union endorsements, buying TV ads, riding the audiences others built. But a small and growing number of candidates are doing something fundamentally different: building their own audiences from scratch and keeping them well beyond election day. Doug Usher, a partner at Forbes Tate Partners and co-founder of the Analytics Program at Columbia University, joins Eric Wilson to unpack how this shift is changing not just how campaigns are run, but how power works once politicians are in office. From why moderates are at a structural disadvantage in an algorithm-driven world, to why Ted Cruz and Gavin Newsom are already playing the 2028 long game through podcasts and social media, this conversation reframes what it means to run for office in 2026 — and what it will take to win.

https://www.prweek.com/article/1942874/building-vs-borrowing-zohran-mamdani-marjorie-taylor-greene-aftyn-behn-blazed-new-path

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Connected TV spending is growing — but the real question in 2026 isn't whether campaigns should be buying CTV. It's who should be managing the buy.
Eric Wilson sits down with Chauncey Southworth, CEO of CrossScreen Media, to untangle the debate between TV buyers and digital buyers over who owns the streaming buy. Chauncey breaks down where the CTV growth is actually coming from (hint: down-ballot races are surging), why siloed buying is costing campaigns real money, and what questions every campaign should be asking their vendors right now.

They also dig into a striking stat from CrossScreen founder Michael Beach: linear TV viewers see over 13 minutes of ads per hour, while streaming viewers see fewer than 4. What does that mean for your creative strategy? And how should campaigns be thinking about the light viewers who are hardest to reach on any screen?

From supply path optimization to message testing to GOTV strategy for low-propensity voters, this is a conversation that will sharpen how you think about every dollar in your video budget.

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The 2026 midterms present a fundamentally different electoral landscape for Republicans. In this episode, pollster David Kanevsky breaks down exclusive post-election survey data from Virginia and New Jersey that reveals how campaigns are now dealing with two distinct electorates: highly engaged partisans who consume news across every platform, and politically disengaged voters who stream without ads and intentionally avoid political content.

The conversation reveals a media landscape where more voters now get their TV content through streaming than traditional broadcast or cable, where news has been "unbundled" from weather and sports, and where platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn now reach more voters than X/Twitter. With nearly half of votes being cast before Election Day and the most persuadable voters being the least engaged with traditional political media, campaigns must fundamentally rethink their approach.

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Host Eric Wilson sits down with John Link, Senior Vice President of Data at Ad Impact, to unpack the eye-popping numbers behind the 2025-2026 political cycle—projected to become the most expensive midterm in U.S. history at $10.8 billion. Link reveals that three to four Senate races alone could hit the unprecedented $500 million mark, with Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and potentially Texas leading the way.

The conversation explores why House races are seeing the largest spending increases despite fewer competitive districts, how connected TV is capturing growing market share as the only expanding media category, and why early money is flooding the system faster than ever before. Link also discusses the real-world impact of mid-decade redistricting in states like California and Texas, the messaging challenges in saturated battleground markets, and why campaigns must navigate an increasingly fragmented media landscape that now includes streaming, digital, podcasting, and social platforms. For political professionals looking to understand where the industry is headed, this episode offers essential insights into the spending dynamics shaping the 2026 cycle.

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What happens when a poker champion with $3 million in tournament winnings pivots to political texting? You get Phil Gordon, founder of Prompt.io, dropping wisdom on selective aggression, ethical influence, and why your campaign texts might be getting ignored.

Whether you're managing a 50-50 race or just tired of your texts going straight to the spam folder, this episode is your permission to fold the bad hands and go all-in on what actually works.

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