Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Gynecologist doing ultrasound of pregnant woman in hospital.

No Doctor, No Delivery, No Future

A military ship out in the sea.

Reasons to Care about the Sailors Aboard the USS Lincoln

Person holding gavel and reading from a book.

Retired Chief Justices Warn of Growing Threats to the Rule of Law

What Will It Take to Rebuild American Democracy?

What Will It Take to Rebuild American Democracy?

Woman putting savings in a white piggy bank.

Affordability Crisis: From The Great Compression to the Great Divide

What Americans think companies should do about online political ads

Data privacy

According to a new survey, Americans oppose microtargeting of political ads, which depends on access to user data.

BrianAJackson/Getty Images
Geoff West
By Geoff WestMar 03, 2020
Geoff West

Geoff West is a staff writer at The Fulcrum, where he covers voting and voting rights, civic education, civil discourse and disinformation. Email:geoffwest@thefulcrum.us

See More Writings by author

A majority of Americans want internet companies to do more to regulate the flow, transparency and content of political advertising.

A Knight Foundation-Gallup survey released Monday revealed surprisingly broad consensus among Americans that social networks, not politicians, should be held accountable for the dissemination of misinformation in campaign ads.

Americans are especially opposed to the microtargeting of political ads, which means putting a spot before a highly segmented slice of the electorate by harnessing user data collected by tech platforms such as Google or Facebook. That has become one of the most hotly disputed practices in a campaign season where deceptive marketing is seen as one of the biggest challenges to a healthy democracy.

Seven out of 10 Americans surveyed opposed such microtargeting by web-based firms, with a strong majority of Democrats (69 percent) and Republicans (75 percent) agreeing that "no information" should be used to tailor online political messaging that appears on websites.

Only 7 percent supported internet companies using "any available information" to microtarget ads at the behest of political candidates.

A majority of Americans also want more insight into the source of online political ads, with three-fifths of those surveyed saying websites should be required to disclose the buyer of the ad, how much it cost, "and who the ad is aimed at."

Republicans were seven times more likely than Democrats, however, to say that online political ads should not be regulated to protect freedom of speech.

The survey also revealed strong support for social media companies banning misleading content in political ads, with 81 percent saying the companies should refuse to run a political ad that provides an inaccurate election date to "supporters of an opposing candidate or cause."

Another 62 percent said the companies should not allow "an ad which says a politician voted for a policy he or she did not vote for" to appear on their platform; 28 percent said the ad should be allowed to run but with a disclaimer warning users it may contain false information.

The researchers noted that Google's policy forbids demonstrably false claims "though examples of this policy falling short of preventing misinformation have been raised."

Facebook has chosen not to fact-check political ads appearing on its platform. Twitter prohibits them entirely.

"The data is clear: Americans are concerned about the possibility of false or misleading content in online ads, and especially concerned about the use of personal information to target ads," Sam Gill, Knight's senior vice president and chief program officer, said in a statement.

Democrats were more likely than Republicans to support social media companies monitoring the content of political ads. Among Democrats, 91 percent said an ad with an inaccurate election date should not run compared to 73 percent of Republican, for example.

The survey of more than 1,600 adults conducted in early December had a sampling margin of error of 3 percentage points.


Latest news

GOP Claims of Voter Disenfranchisement Are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Electoral Reforms

GOP Claims of Voter Disenfranchisement Are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

People waving US flags
Governance & Legislation

Zen and Governing in a Time of Politics as Performance Art

Congress Just Passed a Housing Law That Rewards States for Reform — Here’s Why Colorado Has a Head Start
Governance & Legislation

Congress Just Passed a Housing Law That Rewards States for Reform — Here’s Why Colorado Has a Head Start

Where Do Territorial Courts Fall in Our Constitutional Framework?
Rule of Law

Where Do Territorial Courts Fall in Our Constitutional Framework?

Read More

Person voting in a voting booth.

Why are so many American elections uncontested? Richard Neal’s long tenure in Congress highlights a broader problem involving money, ballot access, parties and candidate recruitment.

Hill Street Studios/Getty Images

America Has an Uncontested Elections Problem

Richard Neal, the congressman representing Massachusetts’ 1st district, is concluding his 19th congressional term this year. In many ways, Neal is a typical long-tenured congressperson. However, Congressman Neal is distinguished by having been elected to Congress uncontested more times than anyone in post-civil rights American history.

Neal owes his long tenure in part to the uncompetitive elections in western Massachusetts where so-called “silent elections” are common. Some would be challengers may be put off by the fact that he has won seven of his eight contested congressional races by more than 20 points. More often than not, Neal has been uncontested in the Democratic primary as well, however, this year he has competition in both the primary and general election.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Democracy Cannot Run on an AI Model

Clerk Matthew Sandbar, 34, demonstrates part of the ballot-sorting process to members of the media attending a walkthrough of the Philadelphia Ballot Processing Center used to process the ballots of the 2022 US midterm elections, in Philadelphia on October 27, 2022.

Photo by Ryan Collerd / AFP via Getty Images

A Democracy Cannot Run on an AI Model

Tallying the results of Washington, DC’s first ranked-choice election in June took about 10 days—longer than many voters are used to. In an age when artificial intelligence can generate an answer in seconds, waiting days for election results can feel old-fashioned, inefficient, even suspicious. And it is about to matter far more widely. This November, 17 states, cities, and counties will use ranked-choice voting, including Maine and Alaska statewide, in races that could help decide control of Congress. More voters than ever will watch results take days to resolve, and more will be asked to trust a count they cannot see.

But that slowness may be one of its most democratic features.

Keep ReadingShow less
People waiting in a line outside as the sun sets.

Voters wait in line outside the Metropolitan Multi-Service Center to cast their ballots in Houston, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. A recent state investigation confirmed that some registered voters flagged as potential noncitizens by a federal system had already provided proof of citizenship.

Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images

Texas Confirms Some Flagged As Potential Noncitizens on Voter Rolls Had Provided DPS Proof of Citizenship

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday.

Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote.

Keep ReadingShow less
People walking down the steps of the U.S. capitol.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) (C), Democratic Conference Chair Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) (R), and House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) (L) and other House Democrats arrive for a news conference on the House steps on November 12, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

DNC's Proposed RCV Ban Sparks Debate Over 2028 Presidential Primaries

Democratic National Committee insiders are poised to ban the use of ranked choice voting (RCV) in selecting their presidential nominee in 2028 – overriding presidential primary laws in Maine and Washington, D.C, and squashing great interest in this use of RCV among state legislators and the many state parties who run their own primaries.

Presidential primaries are among the most compelling use cases for RCV. They draw crowded fields of candidates that voters get to know and are eager to rank rather than be limited to one. Parties must unite their big tent of voters, and RCV rewards unifying candidates. The sequential nature of primaries is a problematic fit with early voting – in 2020, for example, more than three million Democratic voters cast a ballot for a candidate who had withdrawn before that vote was counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026