The 2026 Midterm Texting Recap
More than800 million texts sent in 2026.
On infrastructure that powers billions. The 2026 midterms, measured from inside the send: what landed, what failed, and what carries into 2028.
The market
Federal texting spend has already passed 2022.
Federal committees have reported $168 million on texting this cycle, with months of filings still to come. The 2022 cycle closed at $147 million. January through June ran 70% ahead of 2022.
Reported federal spending on texting, $ millions by month
- 2022$18.0M
- 2024$42.6M
- 2026filings pending
- November
View the data
| Month | 2022 | 2024 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | $6.6M | $10.9M | $11.9M |
| February | $7.4M | $9.4M | $10.7M |
| March | $7.0M | $10.1M | $10.3M |
| April | $5.0M | $11.7M | $13.8M |
| May | $8.8M | $12.3M | $12.1M |
| June | $6.8M | $10.3M | $11.9M |
| July | $7.1M | $18.6M | Pending |
| August | $9.7M | $24.3M | Pending |
| September | $9.5M | $21.3M | Pending |
| October | $10.9M | $33.2M | Pending |
| November | $18.0M | $42.6M | Pending |
| December | $8.9M | $19.1M | Pending |
FEC disbursement filings by payment date, classified from filers’ stated purpose, so totals are directional. Federal committees only. 2026 is shown through June because later filings are incomplete. Tap any month.
The curve
46% of the year arrived in October.
October ran four times September. Scheduled sends rose from 1,895 to 6,717. The year was built for one month.
View the data
| Month | Texts sent |
|---|---|
| January | 2.9 million |
| February | 6.3 million |
| March | 17.6 million |
| April | 25.3 million |
| May | 44.9 million |
| June | 48.6 million |
| July | 58.4 million |
| August | 76.0 million |
| September | 93.5 million |
| October | 373.8 million |
| November 1 to 6 | 58.2 million |
773.1 million of the 805.6 million texts sent in 2026 were delivered.
The growth
Ten times the last midterm.
- 27x
- October 2022 to October 2026.
- 72%
- Average month-over-month growth, January to October.
- Nine
- Straight months of growth in 2026.
- 202278.2M
- 2026, through Nov 6805.6M
What drove it
Growth like this is earned in the details.
- 1 to 5 minTo reach a real person.Around the clock, every day of the cycle. No ticket queues.
- $0To move your 10DLC over.Migration is free and handled for you.
- 48 hoursTo go live.Most campaigns are sending within two days. Registration, list migration, and setup are handled.
- 2¢Per SMS segment, posted.MMS is 4.5¢. That is the most any account pays, and rates drop with volume. No monthly minimums. Pricing
- 98.9%Delivered in October.Excluding invalid or deactivated numbers. 97.6% of all attempts. The full breakdown is below.
- 970+Production releases this year.Email, the Lincoln AI agent, data exports to Snowflake, Databricks, and S3, and a public conversations API all shipped into live campaigns.
- SOC 2Type II, independently audited.Security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Most recent period: April 2025 through March 2026. Security
- 99.9%Average uptime across all 18 services.Measured over the last 90 days. No incidents posted from October 1 through November 6, including the two days that mattered most. Live status
- 16Field notes published in 2026.Deliverability, compliance, and operations, written in public by the team doing the work. Read them
In their words
“Your app saved my ass in two races. Won by 32 and 24 votes.”
“Shout out to Political Comms for cutting our text sending costs in half!”
“127 million texts in under 6 weeks. That is crazy. So glad we are working with you all. You have been awesome to work with and we are looking forward to the future!”
“Thank you! The team loves working with you!”
“I love you guys.”
“Very happy with the platform and the performance.”
“We had an extremely time-sensitive support requirement come up during our Election Day GOTV drive. Their team responded immediately, assessed the need, and had us squared away in under 15 minutes.”
“The Political Comms team gets it: Agentic work is the future, and the side that adopts it and uses it to its full potential will dominate in the campaign world. The platform is purpose-built for Agent use, and hyper customization for any use-case imaginable with agentic software development.”
The final stretch
48 million texts in the final three days.
The Monday before Election Day ran more than four times the Sunday. Peak days do not ramp. They arrive.
View the data
| Day (UTC) | Outbound |
|---|---|
| Oct 1 | 9.2 million |
| Oct 2 | 6.8 million |
| Oct 3 | 8.5 million |
| Oct 4 | 7.0 million |
| Oct 5 | 8.4 million |
| Oct 6 | 11.3 million |
| Oct 7 | 14.3 million |
| Oct 8 | 14.6 million |
| Oct 9 | 12.0 million |
| Oct 10 | 7.7 million |
| Oct 11 | 9.9 million |
| Oct 12 | 8.1 million |
| Oct 13 | 11.6 million |
| Oct 14 | 10.3 million |
| Oct 15 | 16.3 million |
| Oct 16 | 12.4 million |
| Oct 17 | 8.1 million |
| Oct 18 | 8.6 million |
| Oct 19 | 21.8 million |
| Oct 20 | 19.3 million |
| Oct 21 | 11.1 million |
| Oct 22 | 14.6 million |
| Oct 23 | 13.4 million |
| Oct 24 | 13.0 million |
| Oct 25 | 7.5 million |
| Oct 26 | 11.3 million |
| Oct 27 | 21.4 million |
| Oct 28 | 16.0 million |
| Oct 29 | 17.5 million |
| Oct 30, Peak day | 24.8 million |
| Oct 31 | 11.5 million |
| Nov 1, Sunday before | 5.8 million |
| Nov 2, Monday before | 24.7 million |
| Nov 3, Election Day | 17.6 million |
- Peak day, Oct 30
- 24.8M
- Sunday before, Nov 1
- 5.8M
- Monday before, Nov 2
- 24.7M
- Election Day, Nov 3
- 17.6M
The clock
Everyone reached for the same hour.
The 7pm Eastern hour carried 15% of sends. One in four left between 6pm and 8pm Eastern, 25% of the day in two hours.
That is where capacity gets tested.
Sample of 2.2 million messages, October 1 to November 4. Tap any hour.
View the data
| Hour (ET) | Share of sends |
|---|---|
| 12am to 7am | Under 0.5% combined |
| 8am | 1.2% |
| 9am | 5.6% |
| 10am | 6.9% |
| 11am | 8.2% |
| 12pm | 7.1% |
| 1pm | 8.2% |
| 2pm | 6.2% |
| 3pm | 8.0% |
| 4pm | 7.7% |
| 5pm | 7.7% |
| 6pm | 9.6% |
| 7pm | 14.9% |
| 8pm | 7.3% |
| 9pm | 1.2% |
| 10pm | 0.2% |
| 11pm | 0.1% |
What got through
98.9%
October delivery, excluding invalid or deactivated numbers. 97.6% of all attempts.
Most failures were not filtering. They were numbers that could not receive a text.
Why texts failed
- Invalid or deactivated number53.8%
- Landline or not routable17.9%
- Not a mobile phone10.2%
- Rejected by the network9.5%
- Already opted out5.7%
- Blocked as spam2.4%
- All other0.5%
The carrier gap is mostly a list story.
94% of failures on Verizon were invalid or unroutable numbers. Spam blocks were 1.5%.
- AT&T99.7%
- T-Mobile99.5%
- Verizon98.6%
Carrier filtering touched almost nothing.
Fewer than 1 in 1,000 SMS was blocked. Fewer than 1 in 100 MMS.
- 99.92%
- of SMS cleared carrier filtering in October
- 99.08%
- of MMS cleared carrier filtering in October
Failure reasons and carrier rates: sample of 2.2 million messages, October 1 to November 4. Carrier rates exclude invalid or deactivated numbers. Filtering rates: all October traffic.
What came back
The raw numbers flatter everyone.
October reply rate: 4.4%. Opt-out rate: 3.9%. Link texts drew a person’s click about 3% of the time.
Those are the rates that hold once the noise comes out.
86 of every 100 replies asked to stop.
93 of every 100 recorded clicks were machines.
Carrier link scanners and preview crawlers, in a sample of 1.9 million clicks. Click rates here count people only.
What it means for 2028
Three things to carry forward.
- 46%Plan for October, not the average month.Registration, list work, and creative approval all need to clear before the curve turns.
- 82%Clean the list before blaming the carrier.Most failed texts were headed to numbers that could not receive one.
- 93%Count people, not clicks.A click report without bot filtering describes the carrier network, not the voter.
The next cycle
2028 is already being planned.
Bring your numbers. We will show you what they look like against these.
How this was counted
Political Comms platform data as of November 6, 2026. Volumes before 2026 come from our own records of SMS and MMS sent. Aggregated across all organizations and nonpartisan, with no client or party breakdowns. Daily figures are UTC days and include automatic replies. Sampled figures are block samples of raw records, with sample sizes shown where they appear. Large senders weigh heavily.