Spending in presidential and congressional races projected to hit nearly $16 billion and smash records, new analysis shows

By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — This year’s spending to elect a president and members of Congress will hit at least $15.9 billion – putting 2024 on track to become the nation’s most expensive federal election, according to a new analysis from OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money in politics.

Helping to drive up the price tag: blistering spending by outside groups, including deep-pocketed super PACs aiding Republicans. Outside spending – largely through independent expenditures such as advertising, mailings, canvassing and other activities to boost specific candidates – has reached roughly $2.6 billion. That’s nearly $1 billion more than groups like these spent at this point in the 2020 election, the analysis found.

And with that independent activity expected to surge in the final weeks before Election Day, OpenSecrets’ researchers project that total outside spending for the cycle will top $5 billion.

The top five megadonors to outside groups this cycle all support Republicans, led by Timothy Mellon, an heir to the Mellon banking fortune who has donated $125 million to a super PAC working to elect former President Donald Trump. That’s helped drive a major fundraising advantage to the conservative outside groups active in this election.

“There may be a saturation point where elections can no longer get more expensive, but we haven’t reached it yet,” Brendan Glavin, OpenSecrets’ deputy research director, said in a statement. “Super PACs and billionaires continue to spend more and more hoping to select our elected officials. And right now, it is looking as though there isn’t a ceiling to how much an election in the U.S. can cost.”

The super PAC aiding Trump’s presidential campaign, Make America Great Again, Inc., leads the outside spending, plowing more than $239 million into its efforts to elect the former president. Future Forward, the primary super PAC supporting Vice President Kamala Harris – and President Joe Biden before she became the Democratic presidential nominee – has spent more than $212 million.

The outside help could prove crucial to the former president.

While Harris has not released her September fundraising totals, she has consistently outraised Trump since she became her party’s presidential standard-bearer this summer, and is on pace to have collected at least $1 billion with the Democratic Party between late July and the end of September. By contrast, Trump and the Republican Party have raised about $430 million over the same period – including September fundraising totals his campaign announced last week, the analysis notes.

Congressional races also are drawing record spending, according to OpenSecrets’ tally. Currently, the party in control of each chamber – Republicans in the House and Democrats in the Senate – has the spending advantage in those contests.

But the gap is most pronounced in Senate races, where Democrats overall have outspent Republicans by more than $150 million as they seek to retain their narrow hold on the chamber and defend several seats in states that previously backed Trump.

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