Nearly $450 million in outside spending has been spent on Senate races so far this cycle, according to watchdog group OpenSecrets. Over 80% of that sum, or about $360 million, went to these 10 races.
This story has been updated to reflect the number of TV ads Rep. Val Demings’s campaign is currently running statewide.
While outside spending encompasses a range of expenditures made independently from candidates and campaigns, one key independent expenditure is advertising. While outside groups like One Nation, the George Soros-backed Democracy PAC and the Peter Thiel-funded Saving Arizona PAC have become big players in funding candidates in competitive contests, spending by the Senate Majority PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, DSCC and NRSC reveals the races that party leaders are either most concerned about losing or most hopeful about flipping.
Pennsylvania has also been a prime target of ad spending by the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund with $34 million in ad reservations, making it the group’s second most expensive target. The Senate Leadership Fund’s biggest target, however, has been Georgia, where the PAC says it reserved $38 million in ads ahead of the general election.
The New York Times reported in August that the NRSC had slashed about $10 million in ad reservations. In response to the article, a spokesman for the group, Chris Hartline, tweeted that the NRSC “is not cancelling spending” and “there is money being moved” from the independent expenditure side of things “back to to the NRSC side of the wall.” Hartline also said of the Times article the NRSC has “already spent $36 million on TV and has tens of millions more reserved.
Most of the major ad reservations by the four groups come closer to Election Day, which is Nov. 8, when they generally yield more influence. A lot of candidates’ ad spending earlier this summer was aimed at boosting name recognition and raising money, “sort of spending money to get money,” said Warshaw, who co-authored a study on the effect of TV advertising on U.S. elections.
“Even if one party has a spending advantage, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have an advantage in terms of the number of ads actually being aired,” Warshaw said. He added that “probably in most of the contested races, the Democratic candidates are going to have an edge in terms of the number of ads actually being aired, because the [Senate Leadership Fund] is paying such higher rates for ads.
The three Senate candidates with the most funds raised — Warnock, Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Demings — have aired the most television ads between Aug. 8 to Sept. 4, according to the Wesleyan Media Project. All three had over 7,000 airings during that time frame, spending no more than about $5 million in doing so.
In Florida, Democratic groups may be staying out partly because of how powerful of a fundraising force Demings has been herself, particularly as a non-incumbent. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, Demings aired the most ads of any Senate candidate between Aug. 8 and Sept. 4. Days after that period, her campaign released her first ad hitting Rubio over his views on abortion, arguing that “it’s outrageous to mandate what a woman can and can’t do with their body.
The Senate Majority PAC and Senate Leadership Fund have so far not gotten involved in Florida . The NRSC, however, has poured millions into ad spots supporting Rubio. And while not an independent expenditure, Demings was one of nine candidates whose victory fund will receive $1 million from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
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