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The political battle for the Senate is spreading to states many analysts doubted would have a central role in the November midterms, prompting both parties to bolster spending in an election that is on track to be the most expensive in American history.
-- The political battle for the Senate is spreading to states many analysts doubted would have a central role in the November midterms, prompting both parties to bolster spending in an election that is on track to be the most expensive in American history.
US Stocks and Treasuries Fall as Oil Pushes Higher: Markets Wrap Just 36 days before Election Day, and with voting underway in almost half the country, Democrats are betting that voter frustration with the cost-of-living can outpace the Republican Party's financial arsenal. An estimated $11.6 billion has been spent so far, according to the ad tracking website AdImpact. That's more than was spent during the entire 2024 presidential race.
On the Senate side, this year's midterms initially looked to favor Republicans, given the number of states where Democratic incumbents were both on the ballot and seen as at-risk following President Donald Trump's 2024 election. But recent weeks have seen Democrats leading or making gains in states previously viewed as long shots, including Iowa, Kansas, Alaska, Ohio and even Texas. Democrats need to flip four seats to take a majority.
"As the trend lines start to come into view, they have everybody thinking this is genuinely a toss-up. There are so many close races," says Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist who now advises companies. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates seven Senate races as"toss-ups.
" Kansas, which hasn't elected a Democratic senator since Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration nearly a century ago, is listed as"lean Republican," a stunning shift in a state Trump won two years ago by 16 percentage points. Republican anxiety about the state of the race nationally has been clear in recent weeks, as GOP lawmakers began pushing back on the administration's failure to resolve the war in Iran, its deportation policies and the cost of living.
Those moves came as mortgage rates spiked above 7%, the White House tried to ban several media outlets and Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for meetings that were heavy on pomp and light on substance. And while the White House says Trump will begin an intense series of campaign-style rallies for Republicans in the final weeks before the midterms, when he has traveled lately he's mostly visited deep red states and districts.
The next two trips on his calendar, the White House said, are Oklahoma and Alabama, states overwhelmingly dominated by the GOP. One Democratic strategist said that the perception in the party is that Trump has inadvertently done everything possible to expand the Senate map, noting that they are running challengers in states that the president won by large margins. That was echoed by Debbie Cox Bultan, the chief executive officer of NewDEAL, a network of state and local Democratic leaders.
The Republican Party's biggest advantage continues to be financial. Republicans are outspending Democrats in all seven Senate contests rated toss-ups by the Cook Political Report, in some cases by wide margins. In Maine, Republican groups have booked $37 million in ad time from now until Election Day compared to $24 million for Democrats, according to AdImpact. In Texas, Republicans are slated to spend $59 million over the same period compared to just $4 million for Democrats.
That financial firepower is due to the piles of outside money the party has, fueled by seven- and eight-figure donations to super PACs from billionaire donors including Ken Griffin, Elon Musk, Miriam Adelson and Jeff Yass. In the first three weeks of September, Republicans outspent Democrats $213 million to $112 million in those seven Senate races. But take away the outside spending, and Democratic candidates collectively outspent their GOP rivals by $48 million.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee made $24 million in ad buys coordinated with its candidates over the that period, taking advantage of a Supreme Court ruling that lifted caps on how much parties can spend in conjunction with campaigns. Even with that boost, Democratic campaigns still spent $25 million more than Republicans.
One Democratic strategist said some the party's donors are starting to come off the sidelines in terms of giving, after being disappointed with Kamala Harris' loss to Trump in 2024. But big name Democratic donors are still wary of writing big checks to the party and earning the ire, or attention of the Trump White House, given their various business interests.
And many Republican donors are opting to focus their attention on individual races in which they like the GOP candidate and say their money can make a difference, even if the overall climate for the GOP is tough.
"The death of the Republican majority in the Senate is premature," said Eric Levine, a New York-based attorney and Republican fundraising bundler who also hosts a radio show on WABC Radio. "I think we're going to do OK. "
The Senate Bloomberg Election Day White House Republican Party Democrats Debbie Cox Bultan
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