Spending for this year's midterms is accelerating as we get closer to Election Day. Political correspondent Lisa Desjardins makes sense of the billions spent to influence who controls Congress next year.
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Well, spending for this year's midterms is accelerating the closer we get to Election Day.
Our political correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, is here to make dollars and cents of the billions spent to influence who controls Congress next year.
So the money race has been swelling for years. What's different about this year in particular?
Amna, the scale is incredibly different. This is now going to be the most spending for campaign ads, not just in a midterm, but including presidential elections, so the most in any election in American history.
Also different this year, megadonors, there are more of them, and they are spending more money. The New York Times did a good analysis of the top spenders. These are the top Republican spenders, all of them billionaires you see there. Topping the list, you see those two men and the venture capital firm that they run, Andreessen Horowitz.
These two have spent some $115 million, along with their firm. A major part of their aim is AI and cryptocurrency policy. Next, you see Jeff Yass, a hedge fund investor. He is spending some $94 million just this cycle, school choice a top issue for him.
Next, a familiar face, that's Elon Musk, donating mainly to national Republican campaign funds. Those are the Republicans. There's only really one Democratic megadonor who is in that zone. That is George Soros, another hedge fund manager. He and his immediate family have donated some $104 million.
Now, that is to Democratic super PACs, which divided up, we don't know a lot, because these super PACs, of course, are generally dark money. This is very different than the small-dollar rise that we were seeing in former years. What does this mean for democracy?
We talked to Danielle Thomsen, who is at U.C. Irvine. She just wrote a book this year called "The Money Signal: How Fundraising Matters in American Politics."
Danielle Thomsen, University of California, Irvine: Most scholars have found little evidence that campaign contributions, for example, buy lawmaker votes. Lawmaker votes are instead a reflection of members' partisan affiliation, the preferences of their constituents, and their own personal beliefs.
But scholars have found that campaign contributions can facilitate access.
And access is power. Elon Musk is still being appointed and considered for major positions in this government.
She also found that something's changing in early money, that now even first-time candidates are having to raise more earlier on in the competition, and that megadonors in particular are donating in the general election, meaning they don't care as much about the individual candidate. They care about the party that wins.
So the biggest megadonors, as you point out there, generally tend to be Republican. How big is that overall money advantage for the GOP?
It is substantial. We just got new figures from AdImpact today. Here they are. This is the amount of ads that have been booked, reserved for the next month up until the election itself. And you can see Republicans have reserved $641 million worth of ads, Democrats $490 million.
So that's almost a third, a 31 percent difference. And speaking with Republicans just anecdotally, I am hearing that they are spending more money in what are generally considered safe districts. These are incumbents who have never seen numbers as low as they are. They may not be vulnerable, but they're having to spend more money, places like ruby-red Arkansas.
Let's call it flamingo red Florida. So Republicans are going to spread out their money. They have more, but they're spreading it out.
I spoke to John Link of AdImpact, and he said it's about $7 billion in ads so far.
Just as a quick comparison point, it's about $870 million more than we saw in the presidential in '24 that were just coming out of the comparable midterm in 2022. We're about $2 billion ahead of that pace and almost $2.5 billion ahead of the 2020 presidential.
So we live in an environment where we continue to see increased spend in the political advertising ecosystem.
Republicans have also gained from the Supreme Court ruling, which allows the party to coordinate more with their candidates.
We have talked and you have covered about the map expanding for Democrats. You mentioned more spending in some of those red districts. Where else is the money going in this race?
Well, as I said, they're spreading it out across the country. And this is not to say that they are determined to keep this right here, but the amount is massive.
And I want to look at the number one states that AdImpact says where most of the funding has been going. These are the top seven when you combine the primary spending and the general election spending so far. Now, in red, you see those right now. The top three Republican spending states on defense, Texas, Ohio, and Maine.
Together, just those three states, a billion dollars in ad spending. And then you look at the top Democratic spending. That's Michigan and Georgia, Michigan in part because they had such an expensive primary race.
Now, this will keep shifting, as I'm trying to say. We know today there was news that a top Republican fund moved money from North Carolina, where they are on defense, to Kansas. And that is usually an indication that they think they're losing and that the money is more valuable, not in North Carolina, but on offense -- or defense, rather, in Kansas.
So Republicans are having to make some really key decisions. They have a lot of money, but they don't have enough necessarily to cover the map as it's expanding.
As you're covering and digging into all these figures, what else stands out to you about where the money money's going and how it's being used?
Well, it's not just the amount of spending, but exactly that, how it's being used, where it's going, what kind of ad.
In 2022, according to AdImpact, you can see there in blue most of the spending was on TV and radio. However, look at this year. Now you see TV-radio spending, it's about the same, but look at those new categories that have really jumped up. That is streaming. That's Web.
That's where a lot of this surge, deluge of funding and spending is going. Now, some Democrats are hopeful that people can just block those kinds of ads, but Republicans think that's where their low-propensity voters are. So this election is not just a test of ideology, but it is in some ways a test of how you get your news and what ads you listen to.
All right, Lisa Desjardins, following the money.
Lisa Desjardins is a correspondent for PBS News Hour, where she covers news from the U.S. Capitol while also traveling across the country to report on how decisions in Washington affect people where they live and work.