The 2026 midterms ad bill officially topped $10 billion on Wednesday.
Advertisers are now slated to exceed that mark to push their election messages, putting the campaign in contention to become the most expensive American election since at least 2018, according to data compiled by the media tracking firm AdImpact. American elections keep getting more and more expensive, but the fact that this campaign is projected to be pricier than even the 2024 presidential election cycle speaks to just how intense the battle for political control is in the second Trump administration.
That $10 billion, by way of comparison, is more than the amount of ticket sales at the North American domestic box office last year, more than the amount grossed by the top 100 concert tours combined last year and more than the total amount of advertising booked during the 2025-2026 N.F.L. season.
That figure also doesn’t include what is almost certainly hundreds of millions more in political spending that is not captured in advertising data. Nor does it include what inevitably will be millions of dollars more added to existing buys during the final weeks of the race.
Republican advertisers are spending about 11 percent more than Democratic ones on the midterms, including primaries and general elections. Conservatives have generally had the upper hand when it comes to total advertising dollars this cycle, and that remains true in the homestretch, with Republicans holding about a $133 million advertising advantage over Democrats with just under three weeks left before Election Day.
About a half-billion dollars are scheduled to be spent in the Texas Senate races, more than for any other seat. That is largely because there have been four expensive campaigns: A first-round of primary voting between three Texas G.O.P. hopefuls; a runoff between the top two; a Democratic Senate primary; and now a slugfest between the winners of those primaries, Ken Paxton and James Talarico.
When it comes to advertising, the top state election is expected to be the California race for governor, which is projected to run a bill of about $346 million. You can blame Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former Democratic candidate for California governor, for that. He spent about $210 million on ads, almost all of which was his own money, on a primary he lost in June.
The top advertiser, overall, is slated to be the Senate Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for Republican Senate candidates, which is currently on track to spend about $310 million. Adding the spending by a half-dozen affiliated efforts brings the Senate Leadership Fund network’s advertising total to around $643 million.
AdImpact projected in June that the total advertising cost of the 2026 midterms would end up at $11.6 billion, more than the $11.2 billion spent in 2024 and the $8.9 billion spent in the last midterms in 2022.
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