The midterm campaign coming to a rancorous close Tuesday will shatter all spending records for federal and state elections in a nonpresidential year, according to the nonpartisan group Open Secrets, surpassing $16.7 billion in attack ads, salaries and the huge get-out-the-vote operations now underway coast to coast.
The most expensive race is in Georgia, where Sen. Raphael Warnock is defending a seat that he won for Democrats in a fateful special election not even two years ago. In his race against Herschel Walker, the Donald Trump-backed former college football star, the two sides combined have spent a whopping $250 million on ads alone for their general-election battle, according to AdImpact.
In the hard-fought Senate contest in Pennsylvania between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the two major parties and their allies have spent $221 million on an almost constant barrage of commercials since the primary ended in May.
The air wars have only accelerated since Labor Day, when voters traditionally tune in en masse, with more than $840 million in ads running across just eight Senate battlegrounds.
Republicans have pounded Democrats as out of touch with voters on inflation, crime and immigration — messages that appear to resonate in a year when many Americans are struggling with high prices for gasoline and groceries, and looking for someone to blame.
Democrats have countered by depicting their opponents as extremists on abortion and hitting them on an array of other issues. One recent spot calls Oz, a celebrity television doctor, a “snake” for promoting questionable medical remedies. An ad this week from Warnock’s campaign highlights personal allegations about Walker.
In the races for governor that Democrats have cast as existential for the fate of American democracy, the spending battle has been somewhat smaller in scale — but no less intensely waged.
In the eight most competitive races for governor, ad spending has blown past a half-billion dollars, according to AdImpact. The most lopsided governor’s contest has been in Pennsylvania, where Attorney General Josh Shapiro has outspent his opponent, pro-Trump state Sen. Doug Mastriano, by roughly a 20-to-1 margin.
Some of the least competitive races for governor have been the most expensive: For instance, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has amassed more than $200 million, while Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, has raised at least $132 million, much of it his own money. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has raised more than $113 million, about three times the haul of Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee.
The overall spending projection from Open Secrets, which tracks money in politics, would hurtle past the midterms spending record of $14 billion, set in 2018. That money includes everything from ads to office space to campaign salaries to the turnout operations that are now whirring into action.
All told, campaigns and outside groups have spent more than $7.6 billion on advertising this year, according to AdImpact, with the bulk of it devoted to traditional 30- and 60-second commercials.
The biggest ad spenders have been the four outside groups allied with the Democratic and Republican leaders in each wing of Congress: The Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, which are close to Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the top GOP members in each chamber of Congress; and Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, which are run by allies of Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the top Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill.
The groups have become dominant players in American politics since the Supreme Court rolled back the limits on political giving in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, the landmark 2010 campaign finance case.
Republicans have relied heavily in this election on an array of super PACs bankrolled by megadonors such as Richard Uihlein, a cardboard-box magnate from Illinois, while Democratic candidates have had more success raising money directly for their campaigns. And although Democrats have often held their own in the hunt for outside cash, as they did to win back the White House in 2020 with a flood of “dark money,” some left-leaning billionaire donors have been less forthcoming this year.
All told, 15.4% of the money spent on federal races has come from billionaires, an increase from 11.9% in 2020.