On previous sites I have managed that run advertisements, political adverts (during the political season) pay considerably more per page view (called CPM (cost per 1000 views) and CPC (cost per click) than other adverts, so they can often be a considerable source of revenue for a site.
TV networks make quite a bit more money during the political seasons since every campaign and cause is willing to pay more and more to get their advert better placement.
The same is true for website display adverts, except advert publishers can get very targeted in their advert buying: car companies will want to show their adverts to people who have recently searched for or been on car buying related sites. Since it's automated, Ford may put a max spend of $.10 on a banner advert and Chevy may set a max spend of $.15; this will result in the Chevy advert being displayed (it is, of course, quite a bit more than that, as 'publishers' can target against browsing history (was the person recently on a Chevy dealer website? Then Ford may be willing to pay a bit extra), time of day, content on the web site that would show the advert, etc..)
I am turning off "Political" adverts. While the $ aspect of the adverts don't matter at all, I was actually surprised how few political adverts are shown on the site.
In the interest of transparency and curiosity, this is a screenshot of the "Sensitive categories" list with their impression %. Note that I have the "Downloadable utilities" category disabled, since they are stupid (even though, at one point, they made up a double-digit % of earnings since malware is pretty profitable...)
The most profitable category, by the way? It's "Computers & Consumer Electronics" with 16% of the earnings.
The category with the most impressions is "Business & Industrial", with 12.9% of the views; The sub-category of that with the most is "Building Construction & Maintenance" with 2.4% of the views across all other categories.
Since the political category is now blocked, provided that the advertisement publishers properly categorize their adverts, we shouldn't see any more political adverts on the site.
Please let me know if the real world does not reflect this.