America does not do things quietly. With control of both the House and the Senate on the line, the 2026 midterm cycle is on course to be the most expensive in US history, with political ad spend projected to hit $10.8 billion, up from $8.9 billion in 2022. That is not a typo. Ten point eight billion dollars. For the midterms. But money alone does not tell the story. What is genuinely interesting about the 2026 primary season is not the scale of the spending but the techniques being deployed, many of them for the first time at scale, many of them available to campaigns with budgets measured in thousands rather than millions. The primaries are always the laboratory. What gets tested in Texas and North Carolina in February tends to end up in European campaign playbooks two cycles later. Here is what is actually worth paying attention to.

A year ago, almost nobody outside Colombian legal circles had heard of Abelardo de la Espriella. He was a flamboyant defence lawyer from Barranquilla known for representing some of the country's most controversial clients, for owning clothing and alcohol brands and a Miami restaurant, and for having once recorded music albums. Not exactly the typical presidential profile.

Democratic politics is losing not because its arguments are weaker, but because its attention strategy is irrational. Platforms price political engagement the way they price sneaker ads: optimise for the cheapest clicks from the most likely buyers, not for the hardest minds to reach. That logic pushes civil society and progressive politics into chasing cheap likes inside their own ideological niches, while their opponents pay the real cost of reaching the mainstream. The crisis is therefore less about “losing the debate” than losing a maths problem about where influence actually happens.

Everyone talks about the Netherlands when the conversation turns to fragmented multi-party democracies. Twenty-six parties in parliament. Coalition negotiations that last longer than some governments. A proportional system that turns elections into elaborate political jigsaw puzzles.

While Facebook and X have long been the primary battlegrounds for political messaging, they are becoming increasingly cluttered, restricted, and hostile, making genuine connections with voters feel forced and inauthentic.  This creates a challenge for campaign professionals: finding a space where the audience is more focused, the discourse remains (at least theoretically)  professional, and the information people provide about their professional interests and networks is unusually detailed.  So let’s take a look at LinkedIn.

Andy Burnham’s return is a reminder that politics has changed. The bigger story is how political work itself is becoming a profession.