These midterm elections may be remembered as the year the wealthy dominated in political spending for congressional and state elections — to questionable results.
The elections are on track to break spending records, reports the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that advocates reducing the influence of money in politics. And some of the richest Americans and corporations are dominating the spending.
But money doesn’t seem to be solving Republicans’ problems yet, and all the spending can even backfire amid voters’ discontent with the economy and their government.
“Voters are seething,” writes Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center. “They see big money as a major issue, deeply connected to government’s failure to work for them.”
Here’s what to know about money in politics in the 2026 election.
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There is a LOT of it: Dark money, super PACs and Republican spending
In the primaries alone, there was at least $1 billion in dark money spent to sway voters, a New York Times analysis found. Dark money is the term for donors who spend money through nonprofits that don’t have to disclose who is giving them money. They proliferated after a 2010 Supreme Court decision commonly known as Citizens United that allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts on politics.
Special interests are another huge factor in this election, particularly in tech: The artificial intelligence industry and cryptocurrency groups have spent more than $100 million in primaries so far, according to Politico, and are ready to deluge any race with ads when a candidate doesn’t agree with their positions.
Some candidates have become cautious about the money being thrown around in their races. The pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee is spending a lot of money in this cycle, particularly against progressive Democrats — but as its influence and popularity wane, even a Republican Senate candidate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, has asked AIPAC not to spend money on his race. His Democratic opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, won his primary after making AIPAC’s spending for his opponent a big deal.
Political parties have more power than ever too in this election. Over the summer, the Supreme Court sided with Republicans and allowed political parties to spend unlimited amounts of money in coordination with candidates. (Previously there were strict limits.)
The timing was great for Republicans, who have raised far more than Democrats this year. President Donald Trump has started spending hundreds of millions of dollars from his political war chest to help struggling Republicans.
But the half a billion dollars Republicans have poured into races over the past few weeks doesn’t seem to be helping them much, reports The Washington Post’s Isaac Arnsdorf. It hasn’t moved the polls in Republicans’ favor; in some cases, some Democratic Senate candidates are more popular after all that spending, he reports.
Texas’s Senate race may be the epicenter of extreme political spending
In Texas, Republicans’ spending on Senate candidate Ken Paxton rivals that of a presidential campaign spending in the state. Republicans have expressed confidence that with enough money, Paxton, who has survived a series of scandals during his political career, will win.
The Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, James Talarico, has tried to turn all the political spending against him into a major argument for his election: mainly, that the money is why Republicans have struggled to address Americans’ affordability concerns.
“This is the rot at the core of this broken system,” Talarico said in a speech earlier this year. “It’s why we can’t afford anything. It’s why we can’t get ahead no matter how hard we work. For 50 years, billionaire megadonors have been buying politicians like Ken Paxton. And then those politicians turn around and rig the rules of the economy in favor of those billionaires at our expense.”
Polls show it is a very tight race.
Money matters in politics — to a point
Money can define the conversation in a campaign, said Meredith McGehee, a government ethics expert who serves on the National Task Force on Election Crises.
“Money allows candidates to saturate the conversation with ads on every conceivable media outlet,” she said, “which allows candidates to increase name recognition and create a public persona to present to voters.”
Money can also fund get-out-the-vote efforts — or suppress them with negative ads. The Ohio governor’s race is a particularly striking example of the latter: Wealthy businessman and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee, he has spent millions trying to cast Democrat Amy Acton as a drunk. (She disputes that and has called him a “con man.”)
But analysts in Ohio have warned that all the negativity might cancel out and just be something voters drown out.
Elon Musk is another potential case of money backfiring in politics. He’s a rare billionaire spending openly. After spending hundreds of millions to help put Trump back in the White House, his super PAC is spending tens of millions to help Republican Senate candidates.
But he’s also an unpopular figure nationally, and Democrats are hoping to use his presence in the midterms as a rallying cry for their donors and voters. Last spring, Musk spent $13 million on a Wisconsin Supreme Court election. It became a major issue in a normally quiet election, and his candidate lost.
“Having tons of money doesn’t guarantee victory,” McGehee said. “But the contrary is true — not having ‘enough’ does guarantee defeat. And no one ever really knows what ‘enough’ is.”
In Montana, a pro-Trump state, voters will decide whether to become the first state in the nation to ban corporations from spending on elections.
Neither side has concretely shared what exactly they would do to curb all the money in politics, says Waldman, head of the Brennan Center.
“The question for whoever wins is what they will do to try to curb corruption,” he wrote this week. “Otherwise we will be sentenced to one election after another where parties club each other with populist anger, alternating in power with little changing.”
Amber Phillips writes The 5-Minute Fix newsletter, a quick analysis of the day’s biggest political news. Send her an email here, or ask a question that could be featured in an upcoming newsletter.
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