AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Ten billion dollars - that is what has been spent on the 2026 midterm elections as of this week. It's a huge number. But how much does money really matter in these elections? Well, we have NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro here to help us answer that question. Hi, Domenico.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: I mean, it's hard for me to even process what $10 billion even means when it comes to campaigning. Can you just break that down for us?
MONTANARO: Yeah, right? When you hear a number like $10 billion, it can sound like something out of "Austin Powers," you know, where Dr. Evil's throwing out some arbitrary, big-sounding number.
CHANG: Yeah.
MONTANARO: You know, and then you have someone like Elon Musk spending more than $150 million just on the Texas Senate race.
CHANG: Wow.
MONTANARO: I mean, it's really an amount that's basically pocket change to him, but it's a huge amount to regular people who are struggling to make ends meet. And when people's budgets are such a big part of this campaign, you know, it really shows how important control of Congress is, though, to people who have money and want influence and access to power.
CHANG: Sure. OK, I mean, the outcomes really do matter to the ultra rich, but this money - it's being spent to influence regular people, I'm assuming. So where exactly is it all going?
MONTANARO: Yeah, this $10 billion number that we're talking about is just on ads - TV, cable, digital, satellite, radio - and that comes from AdImpact, who we partner with to track ads. This number is on pace to be the most ever in any election cycle, including the last presidential election in 2024.
CHANG: Wow.
MONTANARO: So that's, you know, not staff or offices or bagels to feed people to - or, you know, who work for them or even organizing, knocking on people's doors, trying to get people out to the polls. All of that costs millions more in that on-the-ground work that campaigns do and, you know, not even included in this total.
CHANG: OK, so if all this money is going to ads, I guess my question is, how much does this spending matter? How much do we care about ads?
MONTANARO: Yeah, it really depends. I mean, there's an open question of how much is too much. We're in such a hyperpartisan environment. It's only about 10% or less of people who are truly persuadable that this money is going to try to win over. Competitive states are just saturated with these ads. I spoke with Mike Duhaime, who's a Republican strategist and former political director of the Republican National Committee, and he said that these ads are about trying to persuade but also to keep up with the other side.
MIKE DUHAIME: You're starting to see advertising being - the whole point is almost coming to a draw because you certainly can't let the other side have unfettered access and running negative ads against you and positive ads without countering it. So it's very important, but it's almost to the point now where it's important to just keep the other side from getting any kind of financial advantage.
MONTANARO: So what you're getting with all that is this, you know, ad spending arms race, basically. You spend more, I spend more. And they can do that in modern campaigns because the Supreme Court allowed unfettered money from corporations and wealthy individuals to go toward supporting candidates via super PACs.
CHANG: OK, well, this time around, Republicans may have some or all the spending advantage, but it was Democrats who spent more than Republicans back in 2024, right? And they didn't win.
MONTANARO: Yeah, and how much can wall-to-wall advertising influence that increasingly small number of persuadable voters in an increasingly narrower field of competitive races? I mean, it's a real question about return on investment. Remember, in 2024, ads were being run about Donald Trump, though, and it'd be hard to find someone in this country without a strong opinion about Trump. But in a midterm, when fewer people turn out to vote, the money can really make a difference, especially in congressional and Senate races where maybe candidates aren't as well known. And these campaigns need every vote they can get.
CHANG: That is NPR's Domenico Montanaro. Thank you, Domenico.
MONTANARO: You got it. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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