The 2026 midterms are on pace to be the most expensive midterms for outside money on record. The FEC's latest official summary, published October 1 and covering the cycle through June 30, 2026, counts $643.4 million in independent expenditures — $529.6 million of it from super PACs. At the same point of the 2022 midterm cycle the figure was $419.4 million: 2026 is running about 53% ahead.
The election-season surge comes after that cutoff. Our own tally of the FEC's 24- and 48-hour reports — the filings outside groups must make within days of spending — reaches $2.80 billion through October 17, already more than the $2.26 billion the FEC counted for the entire 2022 cycle, with the final weeks before Election Day on November 3 still to come. That tally is not an official FEC total, so the tables and charts on this site carry 2026 as a flagged, partial row based on the official summary. Measured the same way, and counting outside groups only, 2022 stood at $1.59 billion at the same distance from Election Day; 2026 is 76% ahead. Party committees are left out of that comparison because the rules changed mid-cycle: on June 30 the Supreme Court's NRSC v. FEC decision struck down the limits on spending coordinated between parties and their candidates. In 2022 the parties' campaign committees had spent $192 million independently by this point; in 2026 they have spent almost nothing that way, and instead reported $79 million in coordinated spending after the ruling through their September reports. Nearly two-thirds of the 2026 money ($1.76 billion) was spent after September 1.
The money is concentrated. Senate races draw $1.71 billion, House races $1.07 billion, and ten Senate races (Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Maine, Alaska, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Kentucky and Georgia) account for more than half of the national total. In Ohio and Iowa, outside groups have spent more than three times what all of the candidates raised. Ten committees account for 46% of the spending; the largest are the Senate Leadership Fund ($250.9 million), No Going Back PAC ($185.6 million) and WinSenate ($168.2 million).
By party, $1.55 billion is on the Republican side and $1.19 billion on the Democratic side. In general elections that means money for a party's candidates or against its opponents; primary spending counts toward the party whose primary it is. Nonprofits that do not disclose their donors reported only $20.0 million in direct spending, but super PAC filings show $728 million given to super PACs by 501(c)(4), (5) and (6) groups, which need not name their own donors; One Nation alone gave the Senate Leadership Fund $133 million. Those are floors, not an estimate of 2026 dark money: issue ads and money routed through several groups surface only in tax filings later. One state stands out.