The Most Expensive Midterms Ever: Spending Heads for a Record $11.9 Billion as Chicago Votes
OpenSecrets projects the 2026 cycle will reach $11.9 billion — past even the congressional total in the 2024 presidential year — with outside spending up 85 percent since 2022 and dark money already past its old record.
The ballots Chicago casts Tuesday close the most expensive midterm campaign in American history. OpenSecrets, the independent group that tracks campaign finance, projects total spending in the 2026 cycle will reach $11.9 billion when all the reporting is in — more than the $8.9 billion the 2022 midterms cost, and more, OpenSecrets notes, than was spent on congressional elections in the 2024 presidential year.
BBC Verify, working from Federal Election Commission filings, puts the same picture in snapshot form: more than $9.5 billion had already been spent by mid-October, with political action committees and super PACs accounting for about $5.5 billion of it, and the top 40 donors alone giving $2.4 billion through Oct. 14, a record for that point in a midterm cycle according to figures from the Brennan Center for Justice cited by the BBC.
OpenSecrets' breakdown shows where the growth is. Outside spending — money spent by groups independent of the candidates, driven by super PACs — is expected to reach $3.9 billion, an 85 percent increase over 2022's $2 billion. Dark-money contributions to those groups have already reached $1.47 billion, passing the $1.35 billion record set in 2024, a year that included a presidential race. Conservative outside groups have outspent liberal ones $2.03 billion to $1.67 billion, with the Senate Leadership Fund ($489 million) and MAGA Inc. ($353 million) the two largest spenders as of Oct. 30.
The candidates themselves are hardly quiet: OpenSecrets expects House and Senate candidates to spend about $3.7 billion from their own campaign accounts, with Democrats ($2.2 billion-plus) well ahead of Republicans ($1.4 billion). The largest single donor, by OpenSecrets' count of disclosure records, is Elon Musk, who has given $445 million to federal committees this year. The full totals will not be known until post-election FEC reports are filed — which is itself part of the story: a record share of the money deciding Tuesday's Congress will only be fully visible after the votes are counted.
