Election day is upon us and somewhere, political marketers are waiting to see if their hard work and investments have paid off. Ever wonder how much is spent on political ad search marketing? Search intelligence firm Adthena compiled statistics from Google’s Transparency Report and revealed just how much was spent this year on all the promises, the attacks and the just plain weird in a race to the polls.

According to the latest Google data, political marketers have invested the most funds in California and Florida since May, spending $6.8 million and $4.9 million, respectively. The battle for voters is especially heated in Missouri ($4.1 million), Tennessee ($3.9 million) and Arizona ($3.6 million).

Missouri’s tops the list in terms of ad spend by congressional district—pouring a whopping $1,173,200 into the state ahead of the US midterm elections.

Republicans Make It Rain On Ad Spend

Groups backing Republican candidates spend 1.6 times on Google than their equivalent Democrat-supporting counterparts, Google reported.

Topping the list of heavy spenders, Senate Leadership Fund (R) poured $4.6 million into Google ads and dramatically increased its weekly spending in September and October. By comparison, the highest-spending Democrat interest group, Priorities USA Action and SMP, dished out a total of $3.1 million and steadily increased its spending over the last two months instead of all at once.

An ongoing campaign by Trump Make America Great Again Committee has garnered $1.63 million in political advertiser spend. These ads ask voters to take a survey or sign petitions that demand a wall on the US-Mexico border.

O’Rourke Vs. Cruz: Battle Of The Keywords

Despite considerably more ad spend by the Republican party, the hottest keyword term is “Democrat.” US Representative Beto O’Rourke is running for Senate in Texas against Republican Ted Cruz. The keyword phrase “beto o rourke” has driven the greatest ad spend, with over $2.2 million between May and November. Weekly ad spend for his name reached a weekly high of $464,600 by October 29. Cruz, on the other hand, fetched a weekly high of $122,600 by the same date.

“Beto for Texas” text ads have been viewed up to four million times over the same amount of months.

Both candidate names are driving considerable ad dollars when used as a keyword search term, with $400,000 for “ted cruz” and $300,000 for “beto.”

While Beto has launched a mostly text-based political ad campaign, Cruz has opted for a video-based approach.

Political Ads Get Weird

TV ads are a given, but politicians turned to YouTube and other digital outlets in an attempt to reach more voters, especially the younger ones. This year, voters have had to endure the usual onslaught of attack ads, but the 2018 US midterms have yielded some . . . interesting campaign messages. Just take a look at this mashup from Vice News.