This will be the most expensive midterm election in American history — and won’t be close.
Nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets projects congressional races will cost about $11.9 billion, which represents a $1.7 billion jump from 2022 after adjusting for inflation.
A confluence of factors — including politically motivated billionaires, artificial intelligence advances and a hobbled campaign finance regulation system — have contributed to a laissez-faire environment unlike any in modern U.S. history.
Big money gets bigger
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Contributing to the top-line election spending number are corporations and individual billionaires, both spending record amounts this cycle.
For corporate America, the boost has come on the back of the cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and gaming industries, which, along with private equity, venture capital and energy interests, have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into House and Senate races.
That includes at least $653.9 million worth of direct corporate contributions, according to OpenSecrets.
Then there’s the rocket-sized elephant in the room: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a key ally of President Donald Trump.
By The Guardian’s count, Musk has spent $446 million, or just under 4% of OpenSecrets’ projected total for the entire midterm election.
Much of Musk’s spending has centered on the U.S. Senate race in Texas, where his spaceflight and technology company, SpaceX, is headquartered.
Brendan Fischer, director of strategic investigations at the Campaign Legal Center, said he knows of no parallel in modern American history to Musk’s political spending.
Political megadonors aren’t new, and “there’s always been at least one donor” who stood out each cycle, he said.
“But, to my knowledge, none of those top megadonors in past election cycles had given such a substantial portion of the overall fundraising,” Fischer said. “The amounts that were eye popping at the time … appear pretty modest in retrospect.”
Other prominent megadonors this election cycle include conservative businesswoman Miriam Adelson, wife of the late casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and liberal billionaire George Soros.
“The reason we really care about money in politics is not necessarily just because of what happens on Election Day,” Fischer said, “but what happens after elected officials supported by that money take office. It’s the question of who they’re going to be accountable to.”
Craig Holman, a lobbyist for progressive think tank Public Citizen, believes there’s a relationship between the Trump administration’s entanglement of public and private interests and the massive uptick in corporate spending. Holman also thinks that’s readily apparent through Musk, who led the agency-slashing Department of Government Efficiency early in Trump’s second term.
“One person having such a profound influence on the election is unprecedented,” said Brendan Glavin, director of insights at OpenSecrets.
Going artificial
Along with the artificial intelligence industry’s heavy involvement, technology is changing the way campaigns and prospective voters operate.
In campaign advertising — which collectively cost $11.6 billion this cycle at the state and federal levels, according to AdImpact — committees are turning to AI to show opponents saying or doing things that never actually happened.
Last month, Wesleyan Media Project announced that it had tracked $137 million spent on ads generated “at least in part” through AI.
“It’s just a total fraud against the American voters,” Holman said. “We need to have disclosure anytime that type of ‘deep fake’ is used by a campaign.”
There is no federal standard for disclosing AI use in political ads, although more than 30 states have passed AI-related regulations for political advertising as of June, according to law firm Wiley Rein.
Brian Ruddle, vice president of political affairs at conservative media and campaign firm Harris Media Group, is also seeing campaigns adapt to some voters turning to AI chatbots for election information.
While only 8% of voters have used chatbots to research elections, according to Pew Research Center, Ruddle said some larger campaigns are ensuring that their websites are “easily crawlable by AI systems.” That could mean popular chatbots more regularly return results from political campaigns.
But the strategy could be even more effective in smaller races that don’t have the same volume of information online about them, Ruddle said.
“Some campaigns have caught on” to adapting to AI, he said. “Some haven’t.”
‘No cop on the beat’
The Federal Election Commission, which enforces and regulates the nation’s campaign finance laws, has been severely hobbled since May 2025 because it doesn’t have enough commissioners.
Currently, the commission has two members (both of whom are Democrats) but that’s not enough to hold hearings, issue advisory opinions or approve enforcement actions. Trump has nominated two Republicans who would provide a minimum quorum of four, but neither have been confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
The FEC is “sitting there doing nothing. It’s received over 300 complaints and nothing is done on those complaints,” Holman said. “We have a Trump administration that’s particularly susceptible to influence peddling by the big spenders, and we have no cop on the beat.”
Because of that lack of quorum, the FEC is unable to establish an “easy fix” for social media influencers not disclosing when they’re being paid by political interests, Fischer said. Commissioners would, however, still have to exert the will to get that done even with four members, he noted.
With elections looming, Holman said, “there are going to be so many more abuses that the Federal Election Commission should be right on top of.”
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