Tuesday's midterm elections are on track to be the most expensive election in American history. Political advertising for the 2026 cycle is projected to reach $11.6 billion, according to ad tracker AdImpact — topping the $11.2 billion spent in the 2024 presidential cycle and far above the $8.9 billion midterm record set in 2022. AdImpact raised its forecast from $10.8 billion as the money kept pouring in, and President Donald Trump is spending the final Sunday before the vote doing what no ad can do — rallying voters in person in Iowa and Kansas.
The surge is being driven by the fight for Congress. AdImpact points to expected advertising floods in competitive Senate and governor's races in Ohio, Alaska and Iowa, along with closely contested Senate races in Texas and Maine. Its state projections put Texas at about $850 million, Ohio at about $749 million — where former Senator Sherrod Brown is challenging Republican Senator Jon Husted alongside a competitive governor's race — and Maine at about $491 million. By channel, the projection breaks down to roughly $5.6 billion on broadcast television, $2.6 billion on streaming TV, $1.68 billion on digital and $1.4 billion on cable.
Trump's closing weekend underlines how tight the map is. On Sunday he speaks in Dubuque, Iowa, backing Republican Representative Ashley Hinson against Democratic state Representative Josh Turek in the race to succeed retiring Senator Joni Ernst, then in Salina, Kansas, backing Republican Senator Roger Marshall, whose Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton has pulled ahead in recent polls. The two rallies were cancelled by the Republican National Committee on Thursday, then restored within 24 hours, on top of nearly 20 tele-rallies. At his stops Trump has asked voters to "pretend I'm on the ballot," arguing that his tax cuts and the manufacturing growth he credits to his tariffs are what Tuesday really decides. All 435 House seats and more than a third of the Senate are on the ballot, with Republicans defending narrow 218–214 and 53–47 majorities.
The record bill lands on ordinary voters as a wall of advertising. In the battleground states, households have been saturated for months with ads about prices, taxes, the border and the war in Iran — and the $11.6 billion is being spent precisely because a handful of Senate races will decide whether Trump's agenda keeps moving through Congress or runs into a Democratic wall for his final two years. That is the choice the money is fighting over: for working families, control of the Senate decides whether the tax cuts and tariff-driven factory push he campaigns on survive, or whether the next two years are consumed by investigations and blocked nominees.
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