Midterm political ad spending reaches $565 million

(MIDDLETOWN, CT) March 5, 2026 – Spending on political advertising in the 2026 races for U.S. House and U.S. Senate has reached $565 million cycle-to-date, ahead of the first round of party primaries this week. The total – which includes spending from January 1, 2025, through March 1, 2026 – has been boosted by high levels of spending from groups, which have accounted for over 60 percent of total ad spending in both the Senate and the House.

Table 1 shows ad spending in the 2025-26 election cycle, with spending broken down across race type—House, Senate and governor—and by medium—broadcast TV, cable TV, radio, satellite TV, digital, and connected TV (CTV), which includes streaming and within-app advertising.

Perhaps the most notable finding in the table is that broadcast TV accounts for a relatively low percentage of the ad spending in House and Senate races to date, just 39 percent and 35 percent, respectively. In fact, spending on CTV ads in Senate races is greater than spending on broadcast television ($116 v. $112 million). CTV ads in House races roughly equaled early spending on digital platforms, but digital advertising in Senate races amounted to half the total for CTV.

Although total ad spending on races for governor outpaces spending on House and Senate races, note that the governor totals include the now-decided races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey in November 2025. The gubernatorial campaign in Virginia featured over $80 million in political ads, and political ads in New Jersey totaled over $200 million, across all sponsors. All told, political ad spending in the cycle-to-date for congressional and gubernatorial races, including elections held in 2025, totaled over $1 billion.

Remarkably, the vast majority of the spending to this point in U.S. House and U.S. Senate races has come from outside groups, not from candidates or parties (Table 2).  Almost 65 percent of spending in House races and 61 percent of spending in Senate races has come from outside groups.  This level of activity by groups is very large compared to typical general election activity but not without precedent this early in a campaign.  A Wesleyan Media Project comparison of 2026 broadcast airings reveals that group activity in U.S. House races comprised 63 percent of total airings, with U.S. Senate group activity comprising 56 percent. This compares to 63 percent and 60 percent respectively from the comparable period in 2022.

Coordinated spending, most often joint fund-raising committees where candidates raise funds alongside other candidates or political action committees, has been minimal—just $2.3 million in House races and $14.42 million in Senate races.  (The bulk of the coordinated spending in Senate races was on behalf of Republican John Cornyn in Texas, by the Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund and the Cornyn Victory Committee.)

Table 3 shows that the Texas Senate race, with primaries held earlier this week, is the most expensive Senate race so far, with over $55 million in spending on broadcast TV ads (totaling almost 72,000 ad airings). The three-way Republican nomination contest, featuring incumbent John Cornyn and challengers Ken Paxton and Wesley Hunt, saw over 55,000 ad airings on TV.  The two-way Democratic nomination contest between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico featured over 16,000 ad airings. Once one adds in spending on CTV, radio and digital ads, total spending in the race for Senate in Texas has exceeded $120 million.

Advertising has also been relatively heavy in the Democratic primary race in Illinois, where three Democrats are facing off for their party’s nomination.  There have been almost 28,000 TV ad airings in the race so far, at a cost of almost $15 million.  The vast bulk of these ads have come from Raja Krishnamoorthi, currently representing the 8th congressional district in Illinois.

Top U.S. House races, ranked by broadcast TV ad airings, are shown in Table 4. The special election in Tennessee’s 7th congressional district in October of 2025 is atop the list, with over $5 million of spending on 8500 ad airings.  Second on the list is Arizona’s 6th congressional district, which many prognosticators put into a “tossup” category for the midterm elections.  All of the spending so far in that race has been on the Democratic side, and from outside groups.  Several candidates are seeking the party’s nomination in a bid to defeat the Republican incumbent, Juan Ciscomani. Early spending from outside groups has focused on attacking Ciscomani.

There were primaries in House races on March 3 in Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina.  Four House races in those states are featured in Table 4.  In TX-34, which is expected to be one of the most competitive House races this fall, there were over 5,000 broadcast spots in the run-up to the primary.  Most of the ads were on the GOP side, with ads from groups attacking the Democratic opponent and from the Republican winner of the primary, Eric Flores.  In TX-32, the district has been re-drawn to be a safe Republican one, so the nomination campaign primarily featured three GOP candidates, with an outside group airing ads to promote one of them (Jace Yarbrough).  In TX-15, all of the ads were on the Democratic side, where two Democrats battled for the nomination to face off against the Republican incumbent, Monica De La Cruz.  Finally, over 5,000 spots aired in NC-01, where several Republican candidates battled for the nomination to run against a highly vulnerable Democratic incumbent, Don Davis.  Several outside groups have aired ads attacking Davis, while some pro-Davis ads have also aired.

Table 5 shows the top group advertisers in the 2025-26 election cycle, ranked by spending.  Atop the list is Greater Garden State, a group that spent over $13 million in support of Democrat Mikie Sherrill in the New Jersey race for governor..  Texans for a Conservative Majority spent over $11 million in support of incumbent Republican John Cornyn in the state’s Republican Senate primary.  A dark money group called Georgians for Integrity has spent over $11 million attacking Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones in the Republican primary for governor.

Advertising data reported here for 2025-2026 come from AdImpact with analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. 2021-2022 cycle comparisons come from Wesleyan Media Project analysis of Vivvix CMAG data unless otherwise specified. All cost estimates for ad spending by medium in 2025-26 use AdImpact’s methodology.

The CTV category includes ads distributed over devices where an input is connected to a television (e.g., Apple TV, PlayStation, etc), streaming via set-top-boxes, including video on demand (e.g., Dish or XFINITY streaming) and in apps available on smart TVs (e.g., YouTube or the Hulu app, etc).

The Wesleyan Media Project provides real-time tracking and analysis of all political television advertising in an effort to increase transparency in elections. Housed in Wesleyan’s Hazel Quantitative Analysis Center – part of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life – the Wesleyan Media Project is the successor to the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which disbanded in 2009.  It is directed by Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government at Wesleyan University, Michael M. Franz, professor of government at Bowdoin College and Travis N. Ridout, professor of political science at Washington State University. WMP personnel include Breeze Floyd (Program Manager), Pavel Oleinikov (Associate Director, QAC) and Yujin Kim (Post-Doctoral Fellow).

The Wesleyan Media Project’s real-time tracking in 2026 is supported by Wesleyan University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Wesleyan Media Project’s digital advertising tracking is supported by the contributions of students in Delta Lab, an interdisciplinary research collaborative focusing on computationally-driven and innovative analyses and visualizations of media messaging. We are also grateful to our Coding Supervisors Saul Ferholt-Kahn and Helen Xie and the numerous student research assistants who facilitate additional content analysis of television and digital advertising.

Periodic releases of data will be posted on the project’s website and dispersed via LinkedIn, Bluesky @wesmediaproject.bsky.social and Twitter @wesmediaproject. To be added to our email update list, click here.

For more information contact: media@wesleyan.edu.

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