In the final stretch of the 2026 midterm election, text messages are flying from campaigns and the outside groups supporting them.

Political strategists say texting has grown in popularity as a relatively cheap way to contact voters — costing as little as 1 cent per message — though opinions vary on their efficacy as a campaign tool.

“They’re the robocalls of the modern political age,” said San Antonio political strategist Kelton Morgan, whose firm CSG Campaigns specializes in direct voter contact and print mail. “They are horribly ineffective, but they’re so cheap; it’s just an easy numbers game.”

San Antonio political strategist Bert Santibañez, who has used the ads in recent local campaigns, said political text messaging has improved since it first started, and offers a cost-effective way to reach voters, particularly those in a younger demographic.

“People use graphics in texts, they now use video within texts, so it’s a very direct and efficient way to get your message out,” Santibañez said.

Morgan said campaigns have far more luck using texts to communicate with voters they already know support them, while broader efforts are generally less effective.

“It’s great as a get-out-the-vote tool for people you’ve already identified as favorable to you,” he said. “It’s terrible as a persuasion tool.”

Wondering how they got your number?

Both Republicans and Democrats have a voter file that campaigns and political operatives pay to access.

The files are built off of publicly available information collected when people register to vote, and updated with data points like whether the person participated in recent past elections, which primary ballot they selected and whether they typically vote early or on Election Day.

In addition to that public information, the parties’ voter profiles include private data collected or bought from other sources, such as email addresses, home value, income range and ethnicity.

“They use third-party data vendors to enrich lists with phone numbers and demographic information,” said Santibañez. “They even use statistical model scores to predict partisanship, turnout, propensity, things like that.”

Among the most valuable pieces of information is a cell phone number, which candidates and PACs can keep accessing over and over.

Unsolicited mass texting is illegal unless people manually key in the numbers — something campaigns hire out to get around that rule.

Replying “stop” should opt out of a campaign’s texting list, but it won’t remove your number from the voter file that future campaigns and outside groups continue to access.

“There’s no way to stop them,” Morgan said. “Technically, senders are supposed to go through a registration process, but when was the last time anyone was prosecuted for sending unsolicited text messages? I doubt it’s ever happened.”

Strategists say the most reliable way to stop the texts during a campaign is to vote.

County elections departments distribute a list of who voted each day, which is run through the voter file to remove those names so that campaigns aren’t wasting money advertising to people who’ve already voted.

“It might take a day or two for you to get pulled out of a cycle, but you should, because anybody doing them — even though they’re that cheap — still wants to be as efficient with money as possible,” Morgan said.

This story is part of the San Antonio Report’s 2026 Voter Guide. You can view all of the candidates on the Nov. 3 ballot here.