What is on the ballot, and who is paying for it.

435 House seats and 35 Senate seats are contested in 2026. Committees that are not those campaigns have reported $968,984,613 spent for and against the candidates in 254 of them.

Figures come from FEC filings and each state’s certified candidate lists.

Where the outside money went

Independent expenditures are reported to the Federal Election Commission by the committee that spent them, which also ticks whether the money was spent for a candidate or against one. That ticked flag is what puts each bar on its side. 586 committees filed across every race.

Every race below is a federal one. The Commission collects these filings for candidates for federal office, so spending on a governor’s race is filed with that state instead and cannot be ranked here — an absence from this list is the reach of the source and not a quiet race.

Spending as filed with the FEC, excluding filings superseded by an amendment, repeated transaction ids, and money dated outside this cycle. How this is read.

How concentrated it is

$477,829,748 of the $968,984,613 reported this cycle is in the 12 races ranked above — 49.3% of it, out of 254 races carrying any filing at all.

Every race with a filing, biggest first, each as wide as its share of the total; the 12 ranked above are the labelled slivers and link to their races. A sum over the same filings the ranking is built from, divided by their own total. It says how the money is distributed and nothing about why.

The Senate, race by race

35 Senate contests in 2026 — every regular Class 2 seat and the specials. Candidate lists come from each state’s certified filings; a card notes when a state has not published one yet.

The House, state by state

Every district on the 2026 ballot, one state at a time: the certified candidates, the polling average where one exists, and the outside money filed so far.

How the fields were chosen

Every certified field above is the output of a primary. These are the most recent, as each state counted them — the same record one step earlier.

Open a race.

Every seat carries its own contest: who is on the ballot, the certified primary result, what the polls say, and the money spent on it. Search a state or a district code from the bar above, or start from the map.

Open the map