What the Public Wants Regulated: User Preferences on Online Political Advertising in Six Policy Domains

In the last decade, platforms and policymakers have written and rewritten the rules for online political advertising. However, to date, research on these governance questions has focused on what policies platforms and governments adopt, while the policies that citizens actually want remain unexplored. We examine ordinary user preferences for online political ad regulation across six policy domains that have driven real regulatory debates: misinformation, the scope of permissible ads, news-organization exemptions, special protections for voting information, sponsor disclosure, and microtargeting. Our data come from a nationally representative probability sample of U.S. adults fielded through NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel in November–December 2020 (N = 1,061). We find four patterns. First, trust in platforms to handle political advertising is low across the partisan spectrum, with Republicans expressing more distrust than Democrats. Second, support for regulation varies sharply across domains. Bipartisan support is strong for sponsor disclosure, limits on microtargeting, and removing news-organization exemptions. Views are divided on misinformation removal and on protections for voting information. Third, and relatedly, partisan gaps are concentrated in a few topics rather than diffuse, and largest on items involving misinformation. Finally, when respondents evaluate real ads drawn from the 2020 Facebook Ad Library, approval patterns vary systematically with the content and partisan valence of the ads, with some appeals generating broad consensus and others eliciting pronounced partisan disagreement. Our findings show that some regulations have cross-partisan public support. For others, especially those involving misinformation, any platform choice, including inaction, will draw partisan objection.

2026