With the 2014 U.S. midterm elections coming up in just a few days, candidates are in the midst of the final stages of their campaigns. Of course, social media as a platform has been playing a huge role in campaigning leading up to election day as politicians encourage the public to cast their votes. House, Senate, and gubernatorial candidates alike are vying for the attention of their fans.

Recent columns and comments in this space reflect competitions among political consultants and media outlets for election spending dollars. Use branded channels, Sean Cunningham and, indirectly, Michael Beach argued. Broadcast TV reigns supreme, Abby Auerbach responded. Don't forget geo-targeted online video, said Roy Moskowitz.

There are just three weeks until the mid-term elections. Major fundraising is done. The phone banks are staffed. The candidates are on the campaign trail and debate prep is in high gear. Now is the time for campaigns to make their last-minute push to solidify their base and get out the vote. It's also time for the candidates to start to think about managing the outcome by engaging with the unengaged and carefully spinning the right message to the voters that aren't likely to fall their way.

In “The Top 10 Worst Places to Live,” Michael Beach captures one marketing tragedy of local politics: DMAs don’t line up with political districts, so much of the homestretch ad volume bombards people who can’t vote for the candidate. That’s half the story. The other half is that some people who can vote go numb from seeing so many ads from the same candidates on the same channels so many times.  Put simply, the conventional political media playbook is out of sync with modern life. It fails to use the full TV spectrum, and as a result …

The upcoming midterms are a great demonstration of the bipartisan waste and inefficiencies in traditional television ad buying methods. Since Designated Marketing Areas (DMAs) don't align with many political districts, many places in the country are (or are about to be) swamped in campaign ads - from neighboring states. In some cases, campaigns spend up to 80% of their TV dollars in geographies out of their districts, to households that legally can't vote for them. With this in mind, we've broken down the top ten DMAs by broadcast spending, identifying which parts of these top DMAs fall outside state lines …