President Trump’s political operation has rolled out a major get-out-the-vote program online in the final days of this year’s midterm elections, flooding Facebook and Instagram with ads encouraging Republicans in a number of states to cast their ballots.
Mr. Trump’s super PAC has emerged as the single largest spender nationwide on the two giant social media platforms in recent days, spending more than $1.1. million on Saturday alone. That’s four times as much as the next largest political advertiser that day.
The deluge of digital ads comes as Mr. Trump’s team is trying to boost Republican enthusiasm in the face of the president’s historically low approval ratings. With just two weeks until the midterm elections, polling shows that the president’s policies on tariffs and the war in Iran — and their effect on the prices of gas, diesel and groceries — have threatened the party’s fortunes across the country.
Notably, Mr. Trump’s political operation is aiming its advertising not only broadly at particular states or congressional districts, but specifically at “custom audiences” of individual voters who it hopes are receptive to being pushed to the polls.
A public database of online advertising maintained by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, shows that 100 percent of the ad spending from Mr. Trump’s super PAC is targeting these custom audiences, which the Trump team provided to the platform.
The ads are running in more than 20 states.
Mr. Trump’s super PAC, called MAGA Inc., has sharply escalated its advertising activity in recent days. The super PAC spent $431,458 on Oct. 14, then $681,107 on Oct. 15, then $822,586 on Oct. 16 and $1,154,832 on Oct. 17, the most recent date for which numbers are available.
The super PAC has run more than 2,200 unique ads just in the last week. Political groups often run large numbers of different ads that can vary in minor ways, to see which are most effective.
Some of the most-viewed ads urge Republicans to vote early. “Beat the lines” and “Do your part,” urge ads running in Michigan, Ohio and Texas that have each been seen more than one million times. Another says, “Don’t turn back the clock,” urging Texans to vote early and declaring that “Democrats broke the border.”
Sagging Republican enthusiasm is one of the party’s key challenges in the final campaign stretch. Many of the tightest contests this year — for both Senate and House — are in more traditionally conservative territory, where Mr. Trump’s political operation hopes to remind voters that there is a consequential election. Operatives are trying to reach particularly those who are likely to vote Republican if they show up.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Trump began publishing posts on Truth Social urging voters in specific states to vote.
“Early Voting, in-person, is UNDERWAY NOW in the Great State of Maine,” Mr. Trump wrote in one post, with similar messages for residents of North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, all of which have key Senate contests.
And his super PAC is urging Republicans to head to the polls immediately. Banking votes is a common strategy to help political parties focus their resources more narrowly on those who have not yet cast ballots.
One ad features a photo of Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the two Democratic leaders.
“They’re counting on you to stay home,” reads the ad, with a picture of a hand holding a ballot with red text that reads, “Prove them wrong.”
MAGA Inc. is paying for the ads, but they but they appear online as part of a new Facebook account called Common Sense Voters Coalition.
MAGA Inc. has also begun advertising on Google in recent days for the first time this year, spending $733,000 so far, company records show.
The ads include encouragements such as “Don’t Stay Home,” “Do Your Part,” “Vote Early” and “Make a Plan.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s super PAC declined to comment on the online campaign.
The new digital spending is just one piece of an advertising blitz by the Trump operation since the beginning of September. His allied super PACs have spent nearly $200 million, mostly on television ads, since Sept. 1, according to data from the media-tracking firm AdImpact. Mr. Trump’s team has advertised in Senate and House races in two dozen states, helping give the Republican Party an edge in spending.
Mr. Trump said Tuesday that he planned for the operation to spend more than $400 million in all this cycle. New filings on Tuesday evening will show how much he spent in September.
The spending from MAGA Inc. is not the only get-out-the-vote digital operation on the right.
America PAC, which is funded by Elon Musk, the multibillionaire tech titan, has also been running ads online encouraging people to vote.
On Saturday, the most recent day in the ad database, MAGA Inc.’s spending was more than four times as large as the next closest political advertiser in the country. Next on the list was WinSenate, an offshoot of the top Democratic super PAC focused on Senate races, which spent $289,520 on Saturday.
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