The upcoming midterm elections are poised to be the most expensive ever conducted in the US, with total spending projected to reach $11.9bn, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research group tracking money in politics. Ad industry tracker AdImpact predicts $11.6bn in ad spending this cycle, surpassing the $11.2bn spent in the 2024 presidential election. More of the money than ever before is “dark”, meaning it is impossible to get a full picture of who is spending vast sums to influence races that could provide a critical check on Donald Trump’s second term.
Record-breaking donor concentration
The top 40 donors are giving more than ever before: $2.4bn by mid-October, seven times the amount the top 40 in 2014 gave, adjusted for inflation, according to a new analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice. The significant difference since then is that those top donors now give more to Republicans, and by a larger differential. In 2014, the top 40 gave to Democrats two to one, but this year the top 40 gave to Republicans three to one over Democrats.
Spending from Super Pacs, which can accept unlimited amounts of money, hit the $2bn mark by the end of September, 51% higher than the last midterm cycle, adjusted for inflation. The New York Times counted at least $1bn already spent by dark money groups by the end of August. Dark money is composed of organizations like 501(c)4 non-profits, which are not required to disclose their donors at all, since they are not supposed to have political activity as their primary purpose. The Brennan Center estimated that dark money groups account for an unprecedented 29% share of the top 40 donors and that $699m is largely untraceable.
Legal shifts and new industries
The landmark 2010 supreme court ruling Citizens United changed American campaign finance forever by allowing corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited sums on political expenditures. But rules against Super Pacs working closely with campaigns and candidates are continually flouted and rarely enforced. Trump himself has repeatedly referred to the Super Pac Maga Inc as being under his personal control, which is against campaign finance law.
A June supreme court decision allowing political parties to spend more in coordination with candidates has helped the GOP inject big money from wealthy donors into small but crucial races. Prior to the ruling, national party committees could only spend from $130,600 to $4,071,800 in coordination with an individual Senate candidate, and from $65,300 to $130,600 in coordination with an individual House candidate. The court scrapped those limits, allowing Republican committees to raise more than $48m, dwarfing the $4m additional Democrats added.
The past decade has also seen a major shift in the industries that influence elections. Labor, favoring Democrats, used to account for 14% of the top 40 midterm donors – now it doesn’t even rank in the top 40. Traditional finance interest giving has declined from almost half of the top 40 donors in 2014 to only 15% this year. New industries like crypto and artificial intelligence, and megadonors associated with them, are crowding out those traditional industries. The share of top donors giving to both parties has vastly increased this year, by more than 100 times the levels seen in 2022 and 2018. The bipartisan big spenders – largely cryptocurrency, online gambling, AI and pro-Israel interests – gave almost as much to both parties as the top donors giving to only Democrats.
Megadonors and impact
Elon Musk’s ideological and personal business interests are well-documented, but other top megadonors fly below the radar. George Soros is one of the rare top 40 individual donors who give primarily to Democrats. Billionaires such as Wall Street’s Jeffrey Yass and the Uihlein family (owners of shipping giant Uline) are longtime Republican mega givers, focused on school choice and traditional ultraconservative causes, respectively. Combined, the two families gave at least $260m in the 2026 cycle. Other megadonors include AI tycoons Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whose giving focuses on deregulation, advancing the crypto industry and electing pro-AI candidates. Israeli American businesswoman Miriam Adelson gave $67m this cycle and is known for advocating for far-right pro-Israel policies. Musk alone has given $483m so far in the midterms, a figure double what Soros gave to Democrats in 2022.
Democrats are poised to regain control of the House and possibly the Senate, even as Republicans heavily outspent them, with polls showing minimal results from deluges of attack ads in competitive races. For example, on Friday, with only days until the election, the former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg dropped another $36m for Democratic candidates on top of the $80m he already committed. Best estimates show a steep Republican advantage in Senate race spending, and a narrower one in House races.
The surge in spending is a warning sign for elections ahead, Brennan’s Ian Vandewalker said: “We’ve long had a system of limits and disclosures, but that’s increasingly going away.” Vanderwalker points to trends like new very wealthy industries like AI and cryptocurrency that have burst onto the scene, donating heavily to both parties, “clearly hoping for light or no regulation from the government, which is only going to increase”, and megadonors like Musk whose major spending “looks like a business investment”. Although it’s unknown how exactly the exorbitant spending affected 2026 votes, the bigger shifts cannot be ignored, says Vanderwalker – and serve as a warning for the 2028 election. It’s easier than ever for politicians to rely on one single megarich donor, he said: “In a democracy, it’s supposed to be one person, one vote, and the more one person can influence, the less egalitarian our system becomes.”
