For many years, campaigns have relied on polling to information technique, messaging, and useful resource allocation. However polling has a elementary blind spot: It solely tells you what voters say they care about, not what they’re truly listening to.
That hole is widening, and it’s costing campaigns.
Take the 2025 Democratic gubernatorial major in New Jersey. Most candidates targeted on nationwide politics, President Trump, and the financial system of their messaging. Conventional polling supported that focus. However real-time information engagement information instructed a distinct story.
Amongst probably Democratic voters, training protection was the top-performing challenge by a large margin. It accounted for 30 % of all top-read native information content material (up from simply 18 % the earlier cycle), overtaking financial protection for the primary time. But polling from the identical interval confirmed solely 5 % of voters rating training as their high concern.
Why the disconnect? Voters don’t at all times interact most with the problems they declare to prioritize. The info exhibits that said preferences can usually diverge sharply from demonstrated ones — and that hole has strategic penalties.
Campaigns that rely solely on polling are making high-stakes selections — from advert technique to area concentrating on — primarily based on static information. Behavioral information, in distinction, offers campaigns a dynamic, real-time image of what voters are fascinated with proper now, and the way that focus shifts over time.
Consider it this time: Polling is a snapshot, however voter habits is a stay feed.
In the course of the 2024 presidential election, voters in Pennsylvania who lacked school levels had been persistently studying tales about job loss and plant closures, even whereas nationwide headlines painted an image of a steady financial system. In North Carolina, youthful and non-white voters gravitated towards tales about enterprise closures in their very own neighborhoods, whereas main media retailers targeted on the political horse race.
These weren’t minor deviations. They had been early indicators of what would affect voter turnout. They usually weren’t mirrored within the polling.
Timing performs a important position as effectively. In New Jersey, voters who had already returned their ballots had been largely consuming nationwide political tales. However those that hadn’t — the persuadable, undecided voters — had been targeted on native and sensible points. Nonetheless, many campaigns aimed their closing arguments on the former group, lacking the possibility to shift opinion the place it mattered most.
That is the chance heading into 2026 — to maneuver from reactive methods primarily based on outdated assumptions to proactive methods grounded in what voters are listening to in actual time.
Behavioral information presents that chance. By monitoring the information content material that voters are studying and interesting with — and tying that habits to location, demographics, and vote historical past — campaigns can section audiences extra successfully and ship messaging that aligns with the second.
Polling nonetheless has worth, however it’s now not sufficient by itself. In a digital media surroundings that modifications by the hour, campaigns want instruments that evolve simply as rapidly.
Too usually, campaigns wait till after the election to comprehend they missed key warning indicators in voter habits. By then, it is too late. Behavioral information permits for real-time course correction — a significant functionality in an surroundings the place a single week’s narrative can change the trajectory of a complete race.
Behavioral information isn’t simply one other metric. It’s a strategic benefit. It supplies perception not solely into what voters care about, however when and why. It presents the power to regulate messaging midstream and keep away from the entice of constructing technique on outdated perceptions.
The profitable campaigns in 2026 would be the ones that acknowledge: Voters’ said preferences matter, however the place they focus their consideration issues simply as a lot.
Aimee Bigham is Chief Technique Officer of MV Digital Group.