{"id":2108,"date":"2026-10-22T14:28:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/22\/democrats-are-raising-far-more-money-than-republicans-in-the-us-midterms-campaign-heres-why-that-matters\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T14:28:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T14:28:40","slug":"democrats-are-raising-far-more-money-than-republicans-in-the-us-midterms-campaign-heres-why-that-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/22\/democrats-are-raising-far-more-money-than-republicans-in-the-us-midterms-campaign-heres-why-that-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats are raising far more money than Republicans in the US midterms campaign \u2013 here\u2019s why that matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

For anyone even remotely interested in US politics, the midterm elections are the only game in town at the moment. In fact, there has already been plenty of ink spilled<\/a> about what a \u201cblue wave\u201d landslide for the Democrats might mean for Trump and Trumpism \u2013 and how likely that outcome even is. <\/p>\n

If polling is anything to go by, prospects are looking increasingly grim for the Republicans<\/a>. But I want to take a minute to point to a secondary data source which supports this \u2013 money.<\/p>\n

The Republicans<\/a>, to quote Politico, are getting completely \u201csmoked\u201d<\/a> when it comes to fundraising for the midterms<\/a>. Their candidates \u2013 in red states and blue \u2013 are raising significantly less cash than the Democrats.<\/p>\n

This simply means the Democrats have been able to spend far more money on their campaigns than Republicans. According to the Federal Election Commission<\/a>, which publishes data on fundraising and spending, candidates have spent about US$2.85 billion (\u00a32.12 billion) in this election cycle. And the big spenders have pretty much all been Democrats. <\/p>\n

This matters. There\u2019s a whole lot that we don\u2019t know about money in politics, but there\u2019s also a decent amount we do<\/a>. One thing we know, is that money matters for electoral outcomes<\/a>. That doesn\u2019t mean those that spend more money will necessarily win an election \u2013 just ask Hillary Clinton<\/a> and Kamala Harris<\/a>, both of whom raised significantly more money than Donald Trump, but still lost. But candidates need to spend a certain amount of cash (think of it like a start-up cost) to stand a chance in the first place. <\/p>\n

As the Clinton and Harris examples show, having (and spending) a huge war chest doesn\u2019t guarantee victory. But in donor-led democracies like the USA and the UK, the ability to raise money is tied to, and tells us something about<\/a>, electoral prospects. People don\u2019t tend to give money to candidates they don\u2019t see as having a realistic prospect of winning \u2013 you wouldn\u2019t bet on a donkey to win the Kentucky Derby.<\/p>\n

We saw an example of this during the UK 2024 general election. The Conservatives, to borrow the American phrase, were getting smoked by Labour<\/a> when it came to raising money prior to the election. In fact, pre-poll donations to the Tories fell by 90% between 2019 and 2024. People didn\u2019t think they were going to win, and they were right, so they kept their hands in their pockets. <\/p>\n

When the Financial Times asked some Tory donors why this might be, they revealed another thing we know about money in politics<\/a>: that most donors do want something in return for the money they give. \u201cAny self-respecting businessperson conducts due diligence before an investment decision,\u201d said one donor. \u201cTime will tell whether the smart money will back Mr Sunak.\u201d It didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We are seeing this story playing out again in the 2026 US midterms. It seems the smart money in the US is looking at the price of diesel<\/a>, looking at the general sense of chaos<\/a> engulfing the Trump administration and, most importantly, looking at Donald Trump\u2019s catastrophic approval ratings<\/a> \u2013 and sitting this one out. <\/p>\n

The Republicans aren\u2019t broke<\/h2>\n

But that\u2019s not the full story. While Democratic candidates are out-raising their Republican rivals by five to one from donations, Republicans are bringing in more than Democrats from outside groups. These are political action committees (PACs) and super-PACs<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But this is partisan money, not smart money \u2013 it\u2019s cash generated by each side\u2019s political machine, most of which can\u2019t be committed to supporting individual candidates due to the complexities of US campaign finance laws<\/a>. So it tells us far less about electoral prospects.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk, for example, is the primary funder of Texas PAC<\/a> which has spent US$131 million attacking James Talarico, the Senate candidate for the Democrats in Texas. He gave a further US$158m to the general Republican Senate Super PAC in the last financial quarter too. <\/p>\n

So let\u2019s not kid ourselves that the Republicans are suddenly electoral paupers. The Texas spending alone is far more than all spending, from all parties, at the 2024 general election in the UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Money talks<\/h2>\n

This, of course, speaks volumes about US politics, and is something that should cause concern in other democracies that choose not to place upper limits on donations or spending. Since a 2010 Supreme Court case known as Citizens United<\/a> (which ruled that the first amendment protecting freedom of speech also applied to political donations), spending in the US \u2013 particularly from PACs and Super PACs \u2013 has ballooned exponentially. <\/p>\n

All the while the pool of donors has got smaller. Figures from the 2024 presidential election<\/a> cycle are pretty stark on this. In 2008, mega-donors \u2013 classified as those that give over US$1 million \u2013 made up just 4% of Republican funders. By 2024 that figure was 56%. <\/p>\n

It is widely agreed that for elections to have integrity<\/a> they should embody principles of fair participation, deliberation, contestation and adjudication. All of these are undermined by a system of political financing like this. Or, put differently<\/a>, speech isn\u2019t all that free if everyone\u2019s trying to talk and a crazy guy with a megaphone drowns them out.<\/p>\n

The lesson I draw from this for the UK is that creating an oligarchic state<\/a> where a few parties are largely, if not entirely, propped up by the world\u2019s richest men is not a massively healthy sign of functioning democracy. Or, as I put it to the New York Times last week<\/a>: \u201cWe kind of point to the US as a system of worst practices.\u201d <\/p>\n

What does this tell us about US politics in 2026? Well, the smart money is saying the Republicans are in for a thrashing. But this is an America where a smart approach to money in politics left the building a long time ago. And the rest of us \u2013 especially in the UK \u2013 could learn an awful lot from that too.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Sam Power has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. In July 2026, he was appointed as an Independent Member of the Ethics and Integrity Commission but writes here entirely in his capacity as an academic at the University of Bristol.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For anyone even remotely interested in US politics, the midterm elections are the only game in town at the moment. In fact, there has already been plenty of ink spilled about what a \u201cblue wave\u201d landslide for the Democrats might mean for Trump and Trumpism \u2013 and how likely that outcome even is. If polling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}