Six exclusive audiences complement traditional voter files, helping campaigns respond to the issues and conversations shaping national, state and local races.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The issues shaping an election can change quickly, particularly in local races and campaigns centered on a single issue. IQM and StatSocial today announced six exclusive political audiences designed to help campaigns keep pace with those changes in the final weeks before the 2026 midterms.
Informed by public social engagement around issues, causes and media, the audiences complement traditional voter files with a more current view of political interests. Available through IQM's programmatic advertising platform, they help campaigns reach relevant audiences as priorities and political conversations evolve.
Together, the six audiences cover 67.5 million distinct people, based on StatSocial's national count as of September 17, 2026. They map the 2026 political spectrum, from the hardest partisans on each side to those who sit outside traditional party lines. StatSocial's broader political data also identifies 16.1 million people who show signs of engagement but follow no news outlet, newspaper, or political account.
Bringing social signals into open programmatic
The partnership gives political advertisers three advantages:
- Signals that keep pace with voters. Audiences add a current view of who people follow and engage with, complementing party and voter file data as the conversation shifts.
- Reach through influence: StatSocial maps the voices people actively engage with, from commentators and creators to grassroots organizers and local voices, so campaigns reach audiences through the people who shape their views.
- Issue depth beyond party lines. Segments capture alignment with specific issues and causes, and split political leaning into social and economic dimensions, which opens room for issue-based messaging and coalition work.
The six audiences
The audiences are built for issue advocacy, ballot initiatives, candidate races and local rapid response, when campaigns need to find persuadable voters before the vote.
- On the left: one audience follows independent and democratic-socialist voices and movements (13.9M); a second centers on legacy political journalism and Democratic Party institutions (11.9M).
- In the middle: one group follows politics closely but attaches to neither side (11.9M); the other skews younger and has a political record that doesn't resemble the partisan groups (12.0M).
- On the right: one audience follows right-leaning movement media over mainstream Republican outlets (11.9M); a separate group follows right-leaning cultural, political voices and outlets (4.9M).
One person can sit in more than one audience, so segment counts should not be added together.
How it works
StatSocial's audiences are listed in IQM Segmented Audiences and matched to the IQM identity graph, so campaigns can activate them across all channels in one platform, with no handoff. Buyers can add state, DMA, district geography or custom geo fencing and layer in their own voter file, IQM Power Segments or contextual signals.
"Political advertisers have told us the same thing all cycle: the conversation that matters is happening in places their media plans can't see," said Kris Qiu, CEO of IQM. "StatSocial brings those signals into open programmatic, and IQM lets campaigns act on them alongside their own voter file. That's how you reach people through the voices that shape their views."
"Political campaigns need to understand more than whether someone falls on the left or the right," said David Barker, CEO of StatSocial. "Who people listen to, the communities they engage with, and the issues they follow help show what matters to them. Bringing that behavior into programmatic media gives campaigns a clearer way to reach voters."
Availability
The six exclusive audiences are available now, exclusively on IQM, for the 2026 midterms.
To bring public social signals to your omnichannel campaigns before midterms, reach out to your IQM representative.
About IQM
IQM is a global media buying platform that empowers advertisers in the most regulated verticals to use and enhance their data to make better ad buying decisions.
Our platform empowers advertisers to construct precise audience segments that align seamlessly with their desired target audience base, using their own data, top-tier third-party data sources, and IQM's proprietary AI-driven audience intelligence engine. This leads to more accurate forecasting, budgeting and targeting, as well as delivering campaigns that perform better across screens and formats. For more information, visit www.iqm.com.
About StatSocial
StatSocial is the only platform that builds audiences from cross-platform public social signals at scale, powered by its patented PeopleGraph and KnowledgeGraph. By connecting social data with household and offline data, StatSocial gives marketers and researchers deeper audience intelligence, smarter influencer decisions, and more effective paid media programs. Learn more at StatSocial.com.
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iqm-and-statsocial-help-campaigns-keep-pace-with-midterm-voters-changing-political-interests-302908139.html
SOURCE StatSocial
