In the final weeks of the campaign season, voters faced a flood of campaign ads highlighting competitive congressional races, big referendums and, of course, the presidential race. According to Wesleyan Media Project's final pre-election analysis of campaign ads, nearly $4.5 billion was spent in advertising for federal and gubernatorial races this election cycle on TV and radio alone.

On the 538 Politics podcast last month, we tried to understand more about the content and volume of these ads and make sense of which presidential candidate had an advertising edge over the other. This cycle, Harris outspent Trump on digital ads, dedicating nearly $215 million to Meta and Google platforms compared to Trump's $49 million. This gap in spending echoes the 2020 election, when Biden also led in digital ad spending.

Targeting the seven battleground states, each candidate crafted distinct messages. According to the Wesleyan Media Project report, over 70% of Harris' ads focused on women's rights and abortion, whereas over 97% of Trump's ads focused on taxes.

We also talked about the fact that, in recent weeks, both candidates aired very few positive ads, primarily releasing attack and contrast ads. The effect advertisements have on election results is argued by political scientists, but in a race as close as this one, researchers suggest the tone of the ads could tip the results.

Listen to the full podcast for more insight into how tone, issue-focused ads, spending gaps and ad frequency impacted this election cycle.

In addition to the many federal and statewide races around the country, several major American cities will be choosing their next mayors today. And there are a few cities where under-the-radar competitive mayoral races may shift local politics, mostly on the West Coast. First up, Portland, Oregon!

For the first time this year, Portland voters will be selecting their new mayor using ranked choice voting. All candidates will appear on the same ballot, and voters will rank their top 6 choices out of the 19 candidates. The nonpartisan race features among its frontrunners three sitting members of the Portland City Council — Mingus Mapps, Rene Gonzalez and Carmen Rubio — and local businessman Keith Wilson, who also ran for City Council in 2020.

Advocates of ranked choice voting claim it gives voters more choices, but voters in Portland don't seem to be jumping at the opportunity to learn about the long list of candidates. In an October poll by DHM Research/The Oregonian, nearly a third of voters were undecided in the race, and almost two-thirds of voters said they had no third choice. And the voting system may lead to an interesting outcome this time around: While law-and-order candidate Gonzalez leads in the first choice votes in that poll, when votes are reallocated according to second- and third-choice preferences, he comes in behind Wilson.

As has been the case in past races in the Portland area, a key issue in this election is homelessness in the city. Gonzalez has taken a fairly hardline stance, advocating for stricter enforcement of camping bans, while Wilson has advocated first providing more shelters before strict enforcement of the bans. Wilson has also emphasized his background as a businessman as an asset for the office. Perhaps contributing to his failure to consolidate second and third choice votes, Gonzalez has been plagued by a series of scandals throughout the campaign.

Whoever wins could have less power than previous mayors to implement their agenda, though: As part of the reforms city voters passed in 2022, many mayoral powers were delegated to an appointed city administrator or discarded altogether. And in addition to the mayoral race, Portland voters will be voting on members of the city council, which will be [](), also chosen by ranked choice voting. Given the real possibility of a fresh face in the mayor's office, a larger council and a new division of power, the entire landscape of local politics could shift in the city after November.

In April, I wrote about a striking finding from the first wave of my NORC panel of American adults: those with a history of voting more consistently were much more pro-Biden, while less frequent voters were more likely to favor Trump. The gaps were more pronounced than they had been in similar polling I had done in 2016. Now, with the second wave of data from the same respondents, it's clear that the pattern has persisted with Harris atop the ticket. That has implications for how the final days of campaigning have played out.

Take Black citizens. As Alexandra noted, Harris' campaign has made concerted efforts in the past couple weeks to appeal to lower-propensity Black voters. But while she seems to have shored up support from this group compared to Biden, there are large gaps in Black support based on voting frequency. In my recent poll, 92% of Black citizens who were eligible and voted in two or three of the last federal elections — 2018, 2020 or 2022 — back Harris, while fewer than 5% support Trump. But among Black citizens who've voted in none or just one of the three elections, Harris' margin drops to 37 percentage points.

Similar patterns are clear among Hispanic and white citizens. Among the former, Harris is up 55% to 37% among the consistent voters, but is actually down by 4 percentage points among those who haven't voted recently. Similarly, among white citizens who are consistent voters, Harris actually runs slightly better than Trump while among white citizens who didn't vote in any of the three elections she trails by 30 percentage points.

The most recent New York Times/Siena College polls report a pronounced gradient by prior voter participation as well, with Harris running ahead among likely voters who participated in both the 2022 and 2024 primaries but losing by 12 percentage points among those who voted only in the 2020 presidential election, and by a wider margin of 19 percentage points among those who have never voted.

What these findings mean for today's election isn't clear. On the one hand, they suggest that Democrats may benefit from higher levels of support among consistent voters, whose backing is more likely to translate into actual votes. But they also indicate that Trump has more room to grow — and that it's Republicans who may be hoping for especially high turnout this cycle. That may be part of Trump supporter Elon Musk's motivation in paying registered voters to sign a petition backing the Constitution, in an apparent effort to encourage new voter registrations.

Conversely, these patterns may limit the efficacy of Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts. That's because even among Black citizens, a group that Democrats have historically targeted for mobilization, the surveys indicate that people who are on the cusp of whether or not to vote are less pro-Harris than more consistent voters. As a consequence, Democratic door-knocking and other mobilization strategies may not translate into Democratic votes with quite the same efficacy as in prior elections.

As a voting bloc, Black voters are loyally Democratic. They're so loyal, in fact, that 538 previously reported that they're a "captured" bloc — meaning they're ignored by one major political party (Republicans) and taken for granted by the other (Democrats).

But ahead of this year's election, there's polling suggesting the Black men, in particular, are cozying up to Trump. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Black voters from October, just 70% of Black men said that they planned on voting for Harris. Biden, by comparison, captured 85% of this bloc in 2020. And according to the University of Chicago's October GenForward poll, 26% of Black men between the ages of 18 and 40 said that they would vote for Trump if the election were held today, in contrast to just 12% of Black women in that age group who said the same.

While a rightward shift among men is in line with the gender gaps we're seeing more broadly this year, it's a relatively new phenomenon among Black voters. There's no one reason to pinpoint for this shift. Reporting from Al Jazeera, however, proposed that Black men are particularly keen on Trump's economic policies.

Meanwhile, Harris' campaign has tried to account for this Democratic fears that large swaths of Black voters might just sit out this year's election. In recent weeks, her campaign has made direct overtures to young Black voters, including participating in interviews with The Shade Room and Charlamagne tha God. And during an appearance in Pittsburgh last month, Barack Obama didn't mince words urging Black men to support Harris. "On the one hand, you have somebody who grew up like you, knows you, went to college with you, understands the struggles and pain and joy that comes from those experiences," the former president said of Harris. "And on the other side, you have someone who has consistently shown disregard, not just for the communities, but for you as a person."

It's possible, of course, that Black voters' shift toward the GOP is overstated. After all, Black voters (men included) are still overwhelmingly Democratic. But any marked shift toward Republicans ought to be a cause for concern for Democrats, especially in places like Georgia, a possible tipping-point state this year where around a third of the population is Black. Maybe the results of tonight's race will cause Democrats to stop seeing Black votes as a given — and Black voters can finally be freed of captured status.