Last-minute presidential spend hits Raleigh market

Along with a stepped-up number of campaign appearances, candidates remaining in the race took to the airwaves in a last-ditch pitch for votes heading into Tuesday's primary election.

Data provided by the Kantar Media Group to WRAL News shows that five presidential contenders spent $1.37 million in the past six days. The bulk of that, more than $884,000, came from the two Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The remainder was spent by Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, along with Stand for Truth, a super PAC supporting Cruz.

That data tracks money spent on broadcast television advertising, the most expensive media cost a campaign runs into, not ads aired on cable television or radio.

For voters in other parts of the state, the air war began much earlier in the year.

Viewers in the Charlotte market or the Asheville area, which falls into the Greenville, S.C., media market, have been seeing campaign ads for month because they overlap with South Carolina, which held its Republican and Democratic primaries in February. More than $17.6 poured into those two markets, mainly because South Carolina is one of the four earliest states on the primary calendar.